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My wife and I have adopted three guinea pigs. Two are rescues from an abusive home (featuring very poorly supervised children with terrible boundaries) and the third was a solitary pig from when she was purchased to when we adopted her and she is still figuring out "how to pig" from the older pair and is not well socialized. Anyways, here they are. We named them for Greek and Roman goddesses and they seem to have really taken on the personalities of the deities they were named for: First we have Clio, named for one of the nine muses (specifically, the muse of history). As one might expect, someone named for a deity responsible for creative inspiration is very much     Next we have Juno, the largest of our three guinea pigs and one of two abyssinians. Named for the queen of the Roman pantheon, she is a majestic 1140 grams at her last weigh in, and has a calm bearing. She accepts being picked up and handled with grace and generally likes being combed or getting petted. Befitting her name, Juno is our head pig and she rarely moves fast-- she seems to expect the world to move to suit her, rather than the other way around... though she can be remarkably agile and speedy when she's stealing food from Clio. Juno and Clio are the oldest of our herd and are both roughly a year old and are very much bonded. Juno originally had a sister who did not survive the maltreatment that the trio were exposed to; she is now at rest, the poor dear. I've seen pictures of what she looked like before she passed and I wish I hadn't. Anyways, Juno tends to be quite curious and has been observed checking things out and then coaching Clio to follow her into whatever fascinating thing she has discovered.    Last but not least is our other abyssinian, Bellona. She is named for a Roman war goddess; initially I assumed that Bellona's portfolio basically covered strategy and martial skill, sort of like Athena in the Greek pantheon and was then rather embarrassed to discover that in fact Bellona is the goddess of bloodlust and slaughter. Bellona is a couple of months younger than Juno and Clio and spent the first few months of her life entirely alone and I think noticeably underfed; when we brought her home we immediately noticed that she seemed entirely overjoyed at the prospect of on-demand hay. Her original enclosure, which came with her, was also vastly undersized even for one guinea pig. She remains the smallest of our herd by a significant margin-- where Juno and Clio weigh in at 1100 grams or more, Bellona recently weighed in at around 980g. She is very high energy and excitable, even as she matures, and coupled with the fact that she lacked for guinea pig companions for so long her social skills are significantly under developed and to date we have not been able to successfully integrate her into the same space as Clio and Juno-- while Juno and Clio are physically far larger, when she gets very anxious Bellona can become very aggressive and previous attempts at introductions have ended with Juno spraying urine at her and Bellona biting big clumps of hair out of Juno. Given the size disparity, I worry about what happens if Juno gets pissed off and loses her temper. So for now Bellona lives in her own substantial enclosure neighbouring Juno and Clio's and from which she can communicate with the two bigger girls and observe them but they cannot get at each other. If we are able to some day integrate the herd we'd love that, but we accept the possibility that that may never occur and Bellona is home forever and will be loved and cared for regardless. It has been a real joy watching her grow up and mature; she does seem to be learning from Juno and Clio and lately has begun to very audibly wheek after being silent for months. Bellona frequently gets the zoomies and tears around her enclosure at great speed, and when given floor time she is extremely curious and eager to explore her new surroundings, sometimes at a very high rate of knots. She absolutely loathes being picked up, which generally provokes a fight-or-flight response... and since she can't run away that kinda narrows it down. Remember how I mentioned Bellona is the goddess of bloodlust and slaughter? Here's what her namesake did when last I took her to the vet:  So I put on new welding gloves to handle the little darling, which she proceeded to attack with unbridled fury:  God help the bird of prey that tries to nab something like Bellona. Good luck landing on a pair of ragged, bleeding stumps is all I can say. Anyways, here's the adorable little loon herself:    We've been caretakers of the girls since May/June and are continually blown away at how much personality is packed into such tiny little frames. They're clever, and tonight managed to convince my wife to feed them a second supper after they inhaled their evening vegetables that I fed them an hour or so previously and before my wife returned from work. All three were wheeking and putting up such a racket that she assumed I had been negligent in my duties and fed them right away. And now she, a doctor, gets to experience my world and know that she too has been outsmarted by a trio of rodents.
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Dec 30, 2022 04:56
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 17:40 |
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verbal enema posted:hell yeah Clio has some pipes on her and when she sings for her supper she's trying to hit the cheap seats. Juno almost never whistles at all and never when she wheeks; she's more the rhythm section.
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Dec 30, 2022 06:17
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Sirotan posted:Dang what a cutie. Got a real nice group of piggies there. Thank you! Does anyone happen to have any suggestions on how to deal with static? Clio is having a really hard time when it gets cold and dry outside (don't worry, she is safe and plenty warm, it's just static). 
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Jan 5, 2023 17:16
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Sirotan posted:Humidifier will help both you and her with that problem. Dry air will cause the static and isn't particularly healthy for you either, it can increase the chance of catching an airborne virus. You really want to try to keep it between 30-50% indoors if you can. Thanks for this. We have one in the bedroom, I shall move it out to where the girls are and get another one for us. I can't imagine it feels great to be walking around like an actual pikachu, and the virus bit is concerning given how guinea pigs don't have fantastic immune systems in the first place.
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Jan 5, 2023 17:29
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I'm glad they were able to get that out of the little fellow; swallowing a battery is no joke.
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Jan 16, 2023 01:44
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Treecko posted:I know it's the correct thing to do. I am sorry you're going through this. Seven years is proof that you did right by your pigs and that their lives were objectively better for having you in them, and I'd think it feels really unfair after all of that to be put in the position to have to make a decision of this magnitude for Coleslaw. I don't have anything meaningful to add in terms of guidance; our pigs are just over a year old and hopefully we won't have to make this decision for a few years at least. But I see how this situation hurts, and I suspect it hurts for the same reason that Copper and Coleslaw have made it this long: because you treated them with care, dignity and love.
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Jul 31, 2023 23:20
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Do you have problems with your pigs chewing the poo poo out of tape? Ours all love the sweet taste of masking and duct tape so we've had to get really careful about how we assemble boxes for them to play in.
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Aug 7, 2023 19:06
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One of our three female guinea pigs has been really irritable over the past few weeks and spending a lot of time hiding. No changes in terms of her appetite, and she is still drinking water but we got her to a vet yesterday that specializes in guinea pigs and from what we described and an examination of Bellona, the vet diagnosed her with cystic ovaries and has prescribed a monthly hormone injection rather than spaying as apparently with guinea pigs there are concerns about anaesthesia and the fact that three incisions need to be made due to the locations of their ovaries and uterus. Not looking forward to having to stick the poor creature with a needle once a month but hopefully this will allow her to be her more typical, affectionate self as opposed to the world's smallest grizzly bear. It seems like being female stacks the deck against you no matter what species you are.
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Sep 27, 2023 04:27
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Sirotan posted:It may end up not being necessary to give her an injection every month. Sometimes they will respond very well and the cysts will shrink and not return on their next cycle. The vet mentioned that the injection might help clear things up but not to bank on it being a permanent solution and that it can also lose effectiveness over time. I'd still prefer to avoid surgery if at all possible but if the injection does not work as hoped we will follow up on that if it will help Bellona be more comfortable. The poor little lady is only a year and a half old and already has cystic ovaries and is developing cataracts (though the latter are not really impeding her in any way right now).
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Sep 30, 2023 21:45
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The little darlings require a pretty substantial amount of space... particularly if you require multiple enclosures.
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Oct 15, 2023 22:31
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Captain Invictus posted:It's okay, I'm just glad I was with him at the end. I wouldn't want to be alone either. You did right by him.
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Dec 30, 2023 19:31
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I have posted previously about Bellona, the youngest (and fiercest) of our three pigs, and her ovarian issues. The lupron injections began to lose their efficacy in December, shortly before Christmas. We initially suspected it had to do with them being older shots as we had picked up the medication back in September and kept it frozen since then, but a subsequent shot in late December barely lasted all of two weeks before it was clear that the poor girl was very uncomfortable, occasionally incontinent, picking at her fur along her sides and generally miserable. So after consulting with the vet and with each other, we took the decision to have her spayed. This was nerve-wracking in that we are quite aware that guinea pigs have a risk of complications from anaesthesia that is far higher than a cat or dog, but given that Bellona is young and otherwise healthy we felt obligated to make the decision for her sake. Anyways, she had her surgery a week ago and did well and has been recovering and healing without issue ever since. While she is experiencing gradually reducing pain from the incisions, she is obviously much more comfortable and more like her usual energetic self. Happily, the surgery was accomplished in only two incisions rather than three, so she didn't have to have the third incision on her belly (though the vet shaved for that just in case). Her fur is growing back quite quickly too! Anyways, here is our little lap lion earlier today:  E: Those are not ribs visible-- those are rolls in her side-lard.
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Feb 6, 2024 04:27
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Cowslips Warren posted:Good news! It depends heavily on the breed. Abyssinians like Bellona look a lot bigger than they really are because much of their hair stands up on end in wild rosettes and crests. Normally, Bellona herself has a long, flowing plume on her bum and something of a mohawk on her head-- hence the name. The Roman goddess Bellona was often depicted with a crested helmet as she was a martial goddess. Here is a picture that helps convey what I am describing:  Our boss pig, Juno, has a magnificent bum crest that runs perpendicular to her spine and across her hips and makes her look enormous. She is also an Abyssinian and while she's got some real gravitas (she's 1150g), I wouldn't exactly call her gigantic. Here she is on the left with our third pig, a silkie named Clio on the right:  Here's Clio getting her hair done about a year ago:  Of the three, Clio looks far, far larger than she really is because of the mass of all that hair-- when she is standing, her feet are hidden by all that hair and not surprisingly she requires grooming at least twice a week (which she loves). So most of the time, it looks like she floats around without any clear means of locomotion. Clio is surprisingly swift, so much so that sometimes she appears to teleport.  Despite all of that hair, she is of a comparable weight to Bellona-- both are around 1050g-- though Clio looks far, far bulkier due to her hair.
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Feb 6, 2024 18:21
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 17:40 |
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Clio, being proactive at supper time:
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Mar 10, 2024 02:08
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