[Gpdd] Re: BREEDING - babies having babies

[Andrew]

Hello, glad to hear your young mother and her family are doing well.  I'm not sure at exactly what age females become pregnant, but I've come to the conclusion that it's very young.  We've unfortunately had several experiences of female guinea pigs bought from pet shops already being pregnant.  I would like to tell you about Pip, a guinea pig we had about 15 years ago.  When we got her, she was really tiny.  She was no bigger than a hamster.  Not long after we got her, we realised that she was pregnant.  At about 7 weeks into her pregnancy, she began to find it very difficult to walk.  Her stomach was just so big and her legs were som small that they just couldn't support her weight.  She was finding it very difficult to get around and we were really worried about her.  Well, we fed her plenty of good food and hoped for the best.  We checked her regularly and could feel the babies moving inside her but we were very concerned.  Eventually she gave birth to 3 babies.  We were !
expecting her to have very weak, small babies but the babies were huge.  Honestly they looked almost as big as her, she was so small.  Unfortunately one baby died at 10 days old but the other two went on to live full lives.  Once she had had the babies, Pip also recovered, was able to walk fine again and was a good mother to her family.  I would never believed that such a small guinea pig could have been pregnant.  How she got through it I'll never know, but she did.  So, as you said, it is possible for very young mothers to successfully give birth, though obviously it is not recommended.  In my opinion no young animal should be allowed to breed until it is old enough to successfully rear a litter.  Most of our local pet shops now keep their males and females separate but, back when we first started keeping guinea pigs, this unfortunately was not the case and obviously the females that were housed with males had a very good chance of being pregnant when purchased.  I think i!
n our time of having guinea pigs we've bought 6 pregnant females and only one of these had ended in complete disaster - the babies were still born.  The other 5 all gave birth successfully.  I'm just glad that pet shops in this area now at least seem to realise that animals should be kept separately from each other to avoid this sort of thing happening - I know it doesn't happen everywhere but I certainly have seen a change for the better in our area.  So, if anyone does have a young female who is pregnant, try not to worry too much.  Feed her well and look after her well, everything will more than likely be all right.  It's not good for them, but it can be overcome and usually everything will work out o.k.