SOW

Breeding

We Strongly reccommend that before breeding cavies that you do your research first.

For inexperienced breeders, it is not fair to your cavy if you do not know what you are doing, read books, seek help / advice from your local cavy club. (found in " Cavies" magazine, ( link to their website on the front page)

 

My cavy is pregnant... What should I do?  

If the pregnancy wasn't planned and you don't want to keep the babies... they can be taken away from mum after 4/5 weeks. Either advertise them in the vets, Newspaper, posters in newsagents, or you can take them to a guinea pig show and put them in the sale pens (must be a minimum of 8 weeks old) or if you dont have any luck you can contact a guinea pig rescue home. It may be that you fall in love with them and can't part with them!!!

Make sure during the pregnancy and after that the pregnant sow recieves plenty of nice fresh greens, as the goodness will come out in the milk for the babies.

If you are going to keep them, take any boar's away from the sow after 4/5 weeks, or they will mate with her! the sow's can live with mum, but boars must be kept seperate.

 

I want to breed from my cavies, What do I do?

Firstly, if you have never bred before, seek help and advice from your nearest cavy club (links on home page) Do your research so that you know what you are doing. Make sure you have a clean enviroment for them to live in. Are you breeding to produce show cavies or pets? Make certain you know exactly what you are doing before you put sow and boar together? You need to know all about difficulties during birth / pregnancy, and what to do if the sow does have difficulties! Find a COMPATIBLE boar and sow. Both healthy with no history if illness or deformity in the family.Both sow and boar should be the same breed, colour etc. Once you are happy with your boar and sow, and you are happy that you know what you are doing, all you need to do put them in a pen / hutch together and they will do the rest!

NB: You should never breed from a sow under 4-5 Months minimum, But should not breed from anything for their first time over 1 year.

Put your finger at the very end of your sows spine, you will feel a dip where the two bones end. The dip normally being a couple of millimeters wide. When a sow is close to giving birth, the bones widen to a few millimeters for the babies to be able to pass. If you breed from a young sow, the bones are still soft and will move easily, but if you breed from anything over 1 year that has not had a litter before, the bones cant move as they have hardened and ceased. You then risk the chance of loosing the whole litter and the sow.

 

How long is a cavy's gestation period?

10 weeks / 70 days. If you see your guinea pigs mating for the first time, write down the date... calculate 70 days from then and you should have a litter 10 weeks to the day!

 

Will I experience any problems with births etc?

When its a sows first litter, its not unusual for her to lose some of the litter! Not every litter you have will be all healthy and strong, but if you feed the sow good fresh vegetables and fruit, give her plenty of hay, it will help her to be healthy and strong.

 

I'm wanting to breed show quality cavies. I have done all my research and am happy to find a boar and sow to breed from now... How do I know which Boar and Sow will be compatible?

It is very important to choose a good boar and sow to breed with, they must be up to show standard to breed, because if you use anything less than this, you will never get any better than this! You must always look at the good and bad qualities of the sow and boar...

Example:   If using a self Black Boar that has very good broad, deep shoulders, not a particulary good head, lovely coat texture and colour. Huge ears but small eyes.

The sow, also a self black has ok shoulders, an excellent head, not very good coat colour but good texture and short ears and huge eyes.

By putting these two self blacks together you should achieve quite a good litter. If the litter has a fault ie, short ears or not a very good coat colour, you know that the sow and boar are not very compatible. Its all trial and error! If the Boar and Sow (s) are not show quality you are always going to achieve less than show quality.

DONT FORGET TO TAKE THE BOAR OUT JUST BEFORE THE SOW LITTERS DOWN, AS THEY WILL MATE IMMEDIATELY AND IN 10 WEEKS TIME YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER LITTER!!!