Friday, October 7, 2011

Kobe's babies have arrived!



Yep - MORE babies! lol. The last litter for a while now though. No one else is confirmed pregnant yet, so at least a good month's rest for us all!

This morning, at about 6am, Kobe delivered four beautiful big babies.



This is the only lady of the litter, and she has already been claimed. Little Olivia is a dilute 'silver' agouti (instead of having the black base colour and white tip, it's more of a slate base colour and palest cream/white tip. Very unusual and pretty!).


Olivia weighed in at 80g, and has the cute little crest like her Aunty Sparrow and her mum. She will be a classic smooth coat, but will be a rex carrier.



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This little man was the real surprise from the litter - a stunning jet black rex! I've called him Onyx, and he was the biggest bub at 95g. He has just the tiniest hint of chocolate on his toes, and a tiny tiny spot on his shoulders.


Onxy will very likely grow up to look like his daddy Sprout, with the frizzy, curly rex fur. He is a lovely little man and is as yet unclaimed! (All the unclaimed bubs from the last fortnight are now over on the available page).



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This little guy is Oscar, and is almost identical to Olivia! He even weighed the same - 80g. He has the same agouti colouring, and the crest on his head.



Some of the bubs appear to have the blue-cast to the eyes (known simply as blue-eyes in guinea pigs). I've never actually had this in a litter before, so am a little excited about it. You can just make it out in these photos of Oscar, but it's a little more obvious on Otis below...



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And this is Otis. He is the dilute 'silver' agouti as well, with palest cream/white patches. (I still can't decide if the light colour is white or very pale cream... in some lights it has the faintest cream tinge... like an off-white! It could be because the babies were still a bit messy from birth... but it seemed pretty uniform). And you can also see the blue tone to the eye on this close up of Otis too. Most noticeable on the 'whites' of the eye.



Otis weighed in at a healthy 80g as well, so we didn't really get a runt in this litter. He is going to be a classic short haired smooth coat. Seriously gorgeous, and seriously low maintenance!




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So, after checking over the babies, I decided to let the four new mums and fifteen (!) babies have a run on the grass (which meant I had to make some surprisingly time-consuming alterations to the cage to make sure tiny bodies couldn't escape between the bars!). It was cuteness overload!








We also has some sad news this morning as well. After I'd checked over Kobe's babies, I was in the mansion cage when I noticed a lone placenta sitting in a patch of blood on the hay. No one had even been confirmed pregnant, so I was seriously baffled for a good 30sec or so. I looked around expecting to see a new baby in there - but nothing. So each girl got checked, until I got to Ripley... she had blood staining on her bottom and mouth. The most logical conclusion is that she has had a miscarriage. At most, she would have been 5 weeks pregnant (about half way), with her second back-to-back litter. I'm thinking that her little body just couldn't handle it. She seems fine now, no further bleeding, running, eating, playing. But she still feels more pudgy than I'd expect for a girl her size. So we'll just have to keep a close eye on her for the next few weeks. I'm not sure if guinea pigs can have a partial miscarriage, then go on to deliver healthy full term bubs... this will be something new for me if it happens! (She could also just be perfectly healthy and fat too! Time will tell :P).


1 comment:

  1. Oh dear, poor Ripley, I do hope that she is okay, was that just a one off sort of thing because I don't want that happening to my guinea piggies!

    - Ray -

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