Think my 2 yr. old females pregnant for 1st time

Question
QUESTION: I'm worried because I adopted (we have many rescues), 2 female guinea pigs at 2 yrs. old just recently.

A pair of our males got with them in their large exercise pen, I was an idiot and forgot to lock it.  When I checked them later, they had already been mounting the females and the females were letting them.

IF, they turn out to be pregnant will I lose these precious girls?  I feel awful and worried that they will die trying to give birth, or the babies will die, or some horrible tragedy of the like!

Is there any encouraging information you can give me?  If everything turns out fine, of course we'll be keeping all of them as we have sanctuary with bunnies/guinea/skinny pigs.

Thank you so much!
Paula

ANSWER: Yes, there are words of encouragment. I have sows that didn't have their first litters until they were over two and had no problems whatsoever.

We use the rule of 'breed them before they're one year old' but pregnancy doesn't always happen when we want it. You hear people say that the "pelvic bones fuse together" and they can't deliver over a year of age. Then it seems to snowball to people breeding when they're barely over three months old.  That's not necessary.

Pelvic bones do not fuse. In fact they don't even touch one another. Bones cannot move on their own. That's what ligaments are for.

What begins to happen in a barren sow is the ligaments lose their elastisity and it's the ligaments that help separate the bones to allow the babies to pass through the birth canal. The reality is that we don't really know at what age or stage this happens because there's very little research on this subject.  

I see many beautiful websites built by people who are not breeders and who lack experience in the topics they write so impressively about. There is much false information published and we tend to think that if it's on the internet it must be gospel.  Not always so.

Of course I realize that anyone reading this could say the same here. The difference is years and years of hands on experience.

At this point you can't change anything so my advice is to think positive and wait for the babies. The gestation period is 70 days (give or take a few days). You won't know for sure until the last three or four weeks. So rest easy. This may well be just a few unwarranted gray hairs on your part and everything turns out fine in spite of them. So don't worry until it's time to worry.

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QUESTION: Hello Pat and thank you for the very informative and pretty positive answer.

I would like to ask 2 questions if I may:

1. I was cleaning one of my guinea pig's ears (black side) and the 'colour' was coming off onto the tissue!  I even put a little oil on the tissue and rubbed some of the bare skin behind the ear and black was coming off somewhat there as well.  I was upset thinking someone had dyed her hair & skin to make her look tri-coloured so I did the same thing to another guinea pig from another shelter and some black came off as well from him (skin areas).  What's going on?

2.  My sister wants to let her 11 month old guinea pig have babies one more time.  This female just had her 1st 'litter' 2 days ago, a beautiful baby, just one.  I'm keeping the baby.  If she does let her 11 month old get pregnant once more, how long should she wait since just having her baby?  Some people say 2 months, some say 6 mo. to 1 year.  Again, either  I will be keeping the babies as I've got the room here, or she may keep them depending if it's a bigger litter.
Will the female deliver fine after delivering her 1st now?

Thanks so much and for reading the long letter!

Paula

ANSWER: What you're seeing when you cleaned the ears is just flaked off skin. Even humans shed their skin constantly, we just don't necessarily see it. The darker the human skin the more it's obvious. If you take a white wash cloth and wash black skin you see the same thing. Our skin grows constantly as the old is shed off on a continual basis. So this is a natural thing for the pigs, nothing to alarm about.

As far as breeding back your sister's pig she can breed her at anytime. It's more detrimental to allow too much time to pass then it is to breed within a short time. The sows tend to get fat when allowed to rest a year and the chance for complications is greater, not to mention the fact that they often won't conceive again if too much time has gone by.

I let my sows rest about a month after weaning the litter just because some of them lose weight and their coats don't sometimes look good when they've been nursing pups. The coat is always an indicator of health, so if she hasn't lost any hair or weight and looks healthy then she can let her breed after the babies are weaned at four weeks. I find this more in my Teddies than in my Americans as they seem to have a more delicate coat when stressed.

If my sows are looking really good and the babies haven't taken their toll on mom I leave the babies with mom for five weeks. If it's a litter of three or more I will pull the baby boars first and let the little sows stay with mom. She will naturally wean them at around six weeks of age. You can tell by looking at her nipples. They will have shrunken back to normal size, then you know she's cut them off the cream!

Remember that in the wild herds the sows are bred back by the boar within hours of delivery. Of course they get a great deal of exercise in the wild that they don't get in a cage, so they're generally in better shape. I don't allow mine to breed back like that only because I want mom in the best possible shape by the time the babies are weaned.

If mom looks really rough and a bit worn I give them at least a couple of months, sometimes as long as six months to recover. Again, you depend on that visual instinct that tells you she's looking good or not.

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QUESTION: Hello Pat, boy you are great with the information.  I'm sick & tired of horror stories I keep reading on the internet!  Of course I believe most of them, boy.  

BTW, all of our guinea/skinny pigs & bunnies get hours of exercise outside of their pens everyday, so they do keep the weight down.

I really appreciate everything you've told me and can I ask two last things?

Do females have a greater chance of developing uterine tumours, or other life threatening problems or painful cysts later in life if they've never been bred?

The 2 yr old (age is guessed at by the shelter people) females that I mentioned in my 1st letter that got together with two of my males are both over 500 grams.  They had been in the shelter in a small cage for 6 months so exercise was nil or very little.  One girl is 1250 grams and the other is about 1000 grams.  Could this have an ill effect on them if they are indeed pregnant, old & obese?  We've only had them a very short time and they get out now quite often, plus live in a 5' x 2 1/2' pen.

Thanks so much!

Paula

Answer
It does seem that sows who never have a litter have a greater incidence of ovarian and mammary tumors. But these girls may not be as old as you think.

One way to get a better sense of how old they are is by their nails. As a pig gets older the nails on the front feet begin to kind of twist and the back toenails get thicker. That's of course just an observation of mine (as well as many of our judges who see them) but there's no written literature that I know of to actually make that a 'scientific claim'. It's just another of those "experience based" observations.

The issue of size is not always relative to age as some pigs are just naturally porkers and some are always petite. Some breeds tend to be smaller than others. Satins for instance are generally smaller in size than their normal coated counterparts. So it's difficult to judge just by size. As with most species males are usually larger than females.

The size of the pig doesn't always indicate the problems with deliveries. Smaller pigs do just as well as the big ones. The older sows will also begin to get what we call a 'waddle' under their chin.  It could be compared to a fat person with a double (or sometimes triple) chin.  It's just a bag of fat they carry under their chins. Actually quite cute on a guinea pig, not so much on humans!

So it's time for you to sit down and have a small glass of wine and relax. You can worry if you want to, but it isn't going to change anything. I have a favorite saying that is very often right on the mark, "Don't pole vault over mouse turds."   

(If I knew how to make a happy face with a wink I would do it, but I don't. So I know you get what I'm saying.)