Neutering and Pairing - help?

[_traj_]

Hey guys. I’m in a bit of a pickle and need your advice. As you may know, I am the proud owner of Twouble, Weetzie, and her new babies. I am a NEWB cavy owner, but I’ve been doing my homework and learning from this community. When I realized that Weetzie was pregnant, I must confess, my original plan was to sell the babies back to the pet store

Comments

[ellig123]

I'm not sure if you know this already (sorry, might have misread your post!) but you need to remove the dad from the mum and babies straight away anyway to stop the mum from getting pregnant again.

How big is the cage you have already? Could you temporarily (and it would have to be very securely for the above reason!) divide the cage into two to accomodate all of the pigs until he's neutered? :)

[_traj_]

I don't own "dad." He was with my girl at the pet store she came from. The cage I have currently is a 2ft x 4ft "pet store" cage, and I have it out on loan until I build my C&C. I cannot think of any way of safely altering or dividing it that would give adequate room for all the pigs. =/

[droolfangrrl]

can you make it multi-level and while he's separated from the sows have him on one level and the sows on the other?

[kikayume]

I'm not sure what area you're in, but if there are local rescues nearby you could contact them and ask for advice. Our rescue has a metric crapton of old pet store cages that we're always happy to lend out to people with accidental litters for separation purposes. :)

[_traj_]

I actually did this right before posting to LJ. I emailed a local private GP rescue and am waiting to hear back. I have a spare cage, I'm just worried about the boar getting lonely.

[kikayume]

He will be lonely, but it's a relatively short period of time and will guarantee being cared for properly for the rest of his life. :)

[thalestral]

Remember that for such temporary purposes a smaller cage will suffice if that will keep him in the same room. Alternatively, you could place his cage above the main C&C cage so that he can still talk to the others without taking up extra area space.

Something like this cage: http://www.guineapigcages.com/photos/showphoto.php/photo/17357 but without the ramp :)

[hearthand]

Might be better to put the boy beneath the girls.

I learned once from kikayume that one of her boys escaped from a cage trying to get to the girls. Luckily, she houses her girls above her boys so he only escaped from the cage and didn't drop into a harem.

[thalestral]

Eep! I guess either put the boy underneath or make sure his cage has a well fastened top. I forgot determined boys could escape, I'm too used to lazy girlie pigs!

[hearthand]

Lazy, or clever. I can't imagine - if I were a girlie pig - settling for a boar that couldn't scale the height of a cage. Inferior boar-genes!