Guinea Pig influx!!

[Cibach]

Well a busy year has just got a whole lot busier!!
A Piggy Bank co-ordinated rescue effort has just taken well over 200 piggies from a hoarder situation. The hoarder died and her family were confronted with a garden full of feral piggies. I believe almost all of the piggies have now been removed and have been distributed around the country to Piggy Bank members.
At Glynneath Suzy has taken in 56 of the piggies bringing the number at the rescue up to 106, with more arriving on a daily basis as the inevitably pregnant sows begin to give birth.
One of these little Mums really touched my heart as she is the image of Cappuccino. Sadly she miscarried her litter, but is recovering well and soon will be able to rejoin the large group of sows she is used to living with.

A few pairs of boars have been fostered out to help relieve the pressure, but the 106 piggies mentioned above are the ones currently at the rescue and that number doesn't include the fostered boys.

Suzy also acted as a staging post for the transfer of piggies to other rescues in the region.

Anyone interested can have a look at the rescue site in my signature.

Quite where we put them all is hard to visualise, and I've seen it!!
The conservatory(the usual winter quarters) is full to capacity, as is the shed (the usual summer quarters).
Suzy's sitting room has a few cages in it too.
All this while still operating the rescue as normal and running her small animal boarding facility too!!
The boarding is a recent venture and one that is proving popular with folk who have adopted from the rescue. It's very reassuring to know that someone you trust is caring for your animals when you are away.

So if any one has a place in their heart and home for a pair or more of piggies then don't hesitate to contact Suzy. There are plenty to choose from!!
On a serious note, if anyone does feel able to help by rehoming some piggies, distance within the UK is not a problem as the Piggy Train system usually works very well. The piggies are transported by volunteers from one rescue to another until they are close enough for a new owner to collect them.
Home checks are done by the rescue closest and advice about cages etc. is given.
I realise that most of us already have all the creatures we can care for, but thought it would do no harm to ask!!

[Catherine]

Oh wow!
This is bigger than the farm rescue 6 years ago. That is a staggering number of guinea pigs. It sounds like you have it organized some how, but that is still a lot of guinea pigs. Has Suzy started putting guinea pigs in the bathroom yet?

I wish I was close enough to help. I am glad your rescue groups are coordinated. No one could take in 200 piggies. I do hope there are not too many pregnancies. That poor little guinea pig losing her babies, so sad,  I do hope she is okay.

I will check out the  link. It is amazing how everyone jumps in and does as much as they can.

The Piggy Train is a brilliant idea. No one person has to drive too far and yet you can transport animals right across the country.
Your shelters are really admirable in their coordination and ability to take on something this big.

I hope people are listening and open their hearts and homes to rescue a piggie or two. You will never regret taking in a rescue guinea pig.

If I was nearer I would take some of the obviously older ones. I love my older piggies.

How many are you going to end up fostering or are you full with the ones you have?

[Catherine]

I finally had time to check out the shelter web site. There are so many beautiful piggies. I do hope all those pregnant girls have small litters.
If someone wants a guinea pig, the rescue has every possible size, shape and colour. I just want to snuggle them all.

[Ruth]

I live in the USA so the piggies are too far away from me. That sure is a lot of piggies to have! I never knew there were feral piggies. I guess there must be feral everything. Best of luck to them with homing the piggies.

[Catherine]

The guinea pigs are considered feral because they have been living loose in a back garden. They were still fenced in and they must have been fed something. Grass alone would not be enough.  It is warm enough in some parts of Britain for guinea pigs to survive outside.

It would be wonderful to let guinea pigs run around in a sheltered garden. Sadly the old lady also let them breed and multiply. Guinea pigs are very fertile little creatures and they really did multiply.

[Cibach]

Yes these piggies are feral in the way that any domestic animal that is released or left to their own devices, becomes wild and unhandlable. Thankfully they all seem to have been removed now. The final number was 325, but of course this number is fluid as some did not survive the process and new litters are being born on a daily basis. With a large group like this, that originated from a much smaller number, the inbreeding is very high and some deaths due to the stress are inevitable. A few seemingly healthy creatures have just given up in a manner that suggest congenital heart defects.
Thankfully none of these piggies will breed again. This must be a relief for the females as the maternal mortality rate in healthy, well cared for piggies is shockingly high, so in a group like this it must be too high to think about. We have no idea how many piggies were not alive to be surrendered.

[Catherine]

That is a shocking number of guinea pigs. They would be seriously inbred and I bet they were not well fed either.
No wonder some did not make it. It will be weeks before you know how many babies will be born.

What a sad situation. Did no one visit the old lady and see what was happening?
No domestic animal should be turned loose like that.

How are the shelters holding up with all the extra piggies. It is an amazing rescue operation. I hope lots of people come forward to take an extra piggie or two.

It must have started with a couple of guinea pigs and then just got out of hand. Those poor females would have been pregnant at 4 weeks old and then pregnant continuously until they died, much too young.

[Tobi]

It is very sad when people hoard animals, then are incapable of looking after them properly. In the lady's case, had they been running wild since she passed away....or before? I guess it might be easier to understand if it had happened since she passed, and in that case hopefully the piggies will still have some domestication. But if she kept them like that then that was doing them NO favours.
Guinea pigs are not built for a life in the wild. They wouldn't last five minutes in the fields, wth Buzzards, hawks and foxes. Even cats could catch them. It is very cruel to turn them out to live wild.

I feel a certain empathy with hoarders, but they have got it all wrong. If they made the effort they could join forces with a Rescue like yours, and there could be mutual benefit. But sadly sometimes there are mental illness problems.

For emergency housing....could you erect a tent of some kind or temporary 'garden building' outside? I think B&Q do things like that but of course they charge top prices. There may be somewhere cheaper you could get one? Then all you could use pallets for the floor. If you found you didn't need it after some time, maybe you could re-sell it on ebay or gumtree?
Just a thought....you might have a better plan. I wish you well with all these pregnant girls, and the babies.

[Catherine]

I am wondering what the final baby count is. 

People don't think it over when they put pets together like that. All those guinea pigs could have come from one breeding pair.
Once you get into the second generation the numbers increase at a terrible rate.

I knew someone who bought some dwarf hamsters and kept them all together. Within a few months they had 50 hamsters. They didn't know what to do. I went over there and split up the boys and the girls and there were no more babies. They still had 50 hamsters to look after.

I am sure all the guinea pigs will find homes in the end, but what a big undertaking to rescue so many at once.

[Cibach]

Well the babies are still coming!! Some of the sows must have just "caught" immediately before they were removed.
The tiny size of some of the mums is shocking.
Baby piggies are delightful but there is a Bad, bad side to it. Taking the entire number of rescue piggies into account (i.e. not just those in Glynneath) of the births, only about 75% of the babies are being born alive. Most litters have been small ( 1 or 2 babies) and those babies are usually surviving, but litters bigger than that are not so lucky. One mum at Glynneath had 3 babies but only one was born alive. Maternal deaths on average with healthy well looked after piggies is about 20% and they are seeing rates higher than this with this lot.
One of the tiny mums was very unlucky. She was carrying 3 or 4 babies and they all died before birth. They were too well developed to be reabsorbed and the strain on the sows body was too much and she died too, despite the best efforts to save her.
So far there have been 70 births over the entire number rescued but there are still many more to come.
There seem to be more sows than boars being born and I wonder if this is a survival mechanism that kicks in in this sort of situation. If there are more sows, more babies can be born and maybe more will survive. But who knows.
There have been a lot of skin issues with them too. The babies that were born before they were removed have almost all had ringworm, whereas the adults have nearly all had mites, with hardly any crossover. I have never seen this delineation before. usually if one has mites they all do and the same for ringworm.

We did a rough calculation about our own herd and were horrified at the potential!! The young group have been with us since before Christmas and if Cecil were not neutered and each of the girls had litters of 3 and all were female we could have had more than 50 piggies by now!!
And that's not counting our old lady Ruby!!
It can so easily get out of hand.