hi. last week i rehomed a rescue guinea pig. she is roughly 6 weeks pregnant as she was abandoned in a box with a male. luckily shes only young so pelvic bones shouldnt have fused. whats confusing me is for the last 4 days shes been acting as though shes in heat. making the rumbeling noise and chasing my other females around. is this an act of dominence?
would appreciate any help.
thanks
Sounds like dominance issues to me. The fact that she didn't start right away was probably just a settling in thing. At this point she has been with you long enough to decide to try and exert her dominance. This is pretty normal when a sow group composition changes and is not a problem unless it degenerates into actual fighting. Fighting among sows is fortunately pretty rare though repeated rounds of "lets figure out who is boss" can occur on a regular basis if the sows are all pretty close in size and "power". In all our years of raising guinea pigs (40 +) we've only had a couple of sows who just refused to have a female cage mate so things should settle down before long.
The other responder has a good point.
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Something else to consider is that one of your other sows may be in season and if your new girl is dominant, she may just be picking up on that. Cavies come in season about every 2 weeks (13 days roughly) and I've noticed that my girls that are housed together seem to cycle together. The new girl has all kinds of hormones going on right now plus the added stimulant of a new herd of sows.
Good luck!
I agree with the others. I would like to add an experience we had once. One of our sows decided she hated her cagemates when she was expecting so we had to put her in a cage by herself. After she had the pups, she was fine.
