[Gpdd] Health. Re: Pregnancy in the older sow

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Hi Slaves Everywhere,

Rayna,

Last year we took in a sow from a nearby nursery school. She was 
heavily pregnant and came in with a companion, a young male. No one at 
the school knew how old the sow was.

The routine was that the two guinea pigs were fostered by a rota of 
school children for vacation times and brought back to school when a 
new term started. At some time the sows original companion, another 
sow, died and the family who were looking after them substituted the  
nearest look-alike they could find to take her place. But this 
replacement was male and not female. The teacher who originally looked 
after the pigs when they were first given to the school had moved on so 
no one knew how old she was. An estimate put her at about thirty months 
old.

We immediately began feeding her up. We followed Peter Gurney's advice 
about raspberry leaf tablets and started giving her these as soon as 
she arrived. Our vet was on standby to perform an emergency op but she 
gave birth to two babies. Mother and babies survived. And as they were 
all girls we kept them to add to our herd.

Vitamin E is considered vital for a healthy pregnancy in guinea pigs 
also. We kept our old girl in a quiet room to limit stress. We handled 
her as little as possible too.
We fed plenty of fresh hay and vegetables every day. We are lucky to 
have a large garden with plenty of grass and weeds. Sow or milk thistle 
is good for sows. We also fed the very young tips of bramble or wild 
blackberry bushes. My elderly neighbour fed these to his pregnant 
rabbits as a young man and was quite sure they were very beneficial. We 
did give her pellets but she seemed to prefer everything else and very 
often left them alone. There is some research that says high protein 
mixes could possibly make for larger than normal babies, which is why 
we were happy to concentrate on the feeding of fresh vegetables, such 
as Romaine lettuce, corn on the cob (with the paper husk and silks as 
these are also highly beneficial for pigs), tomatoes, honeydew melon, 
green leaf vegetables, carrots and beans to name but a few.

I hope this is of some use to you.

Best Wishes to all slaves and pigs.

Antoinette and the Magic 60.