guinea babies

Question
my female is about 6-7 months old [she had her first litter last night, but she killed all 3 of them - she bit a hole in them [ WHY DID SHE KILL THEM]i raised pigs for 3 years and never seen any thang like this. please -do you have any idea why.  thanks ,jeanette

Answer
Hello Jeanette,

I'm assuming you didn't witness the birth or you would have stopped her. Going with that, I believe she likely didn't actually intentionally kill them. Often if pups are born stillborn mom will get overzealous in her attempts to revive them. Pups have often been found dead with limbs missing, ears ripped off, or other injuries that occured while mom was trying to clean, and stimulate to live, a non-responsive pup. She may simply have been trying to do everything she could to save them and failed. As you apparently already know, piggies are typically not aggressive with their pups and even those who are will rarely kill them and I truly don't believe that was your piggy's intention this time either. Something may have gone wrong and they took longer than they should to come out and as a result died from lack of oxygen. Then mom desperately wanted them to live and tried her very best to revive them. I'm so sorry you lost your three pups in such a traumatic way. It always hard to lose them, especially ones who didn't seem to even get a chance at life.

-kkat
www.geocities.com/abyssinianguineapigs