Still No Babies...

Ebbie is crossing her legs and holding on for dear life from the looks of it. At 1500g she is enormous, yet won't give up the goods. Today she's officially 65 days gone, her pelvic bones have been open for 7 days, babies have been grinding for 7 days and yesterday they dropped into the birthing position. So something's gotta happen soon!

I've been busy with various other cavy related things as well though. Gosford Show is this Sunday which means grooming, grooming, grooming! Edmund is pretty much the same but he gets an extra good comb out on his belly three weeks before to remove any matts building up in those curls. Sterling has been ever so carefully combed, hair by hair making sure there's no knots in his uber thick coat. After the Gosford Show I'll cut all his locks off again as it's a hassle keeping him knot free when he's not used to constant grooming. Laertes has been the most labour intensive. I stripped the guard hairs out of his coat last Thursday and I'm grooming him for at least thirty minutes a day until the show. This involves meticulously picking the white hairs out of the black and the black out of the white till he's nice and defined.

My other main consideration is caging. Now that Ebbie's babies are due it's time for Eddie, Sterling and La-La to move out of the grow out cages and into boar quarters. Since I don't actually own boar quarters I've been shopping. I was originally going to build a bank of three 60 x 60 cages but realised that costs twice as much as buying dog crates that are 76cm x 52cm. They give the same floor space but only cost $140 and can be converted into two levels per cage. I have an excellent supply of corflute so I think I'll go ahead and buy the dog crates and make deep corflute trays for them. I can easily ziptie the dog crates into a tower and add fleece around two sides to give it solid sides.

Still very pregnant.

Lady Ebony still hasn't popped! Seriously she looks like she's going to explode any minute but she's clearly keeping those little legs crossed. She's up to 1500g, yes that's right 1500! half again then her normal weight of 1000g.

A couple of things are worrying me a bit. She's gotten very quiet and spends a lot of time just sitting. Ebbies normally a very active miss so it does worry me, but then again she's carrying an extra half a kilo, and I'm sure that's exhausting... She's getting extra time on the floor to make up for it (knowing my luck she'll litter on the floor LOL).

Quietness and lethargy can be precursors to toxaemia so Ebbie's on hourly checks during the day and gets checked a couple of times at night as well. She's also being showered with treats to help prevent her going toxic and I can't say she minds, I think if anything she'd like more broccoli and kiwi fruit LOL.

The other thing is that this morning one side had stopped moving. Ebbies babies are very active and have been since the 9th, they started grinding their teeth maybe five days ago. Her right side is the largest and either has the biggest two headed baby ever in there, or multiples (I'm gonna go with multiples) the other side is much smaller and has only one set of grinding teeth. It's this side that has stopped moving, Ebbie also got quite snappish when I touched it. So I'm hoping and praying all is well.

So I'm fairly sure Ebbies at 63 days now.

I even have a little timeline of her pregnancy...

14/2 - Placed with boar
24/2 - Went on heat, conception suspected
16/3 - Weight started increasing steadily
1/4 - Babies felt
9/4 - Babies Moving
21/4 - Babies grinding teeth
24/4 - Ebony became quiet

I am every excited and expect to see babies before the end of next week!

Baby watch!

It's now been 69 days since Ebbie and Sterling were first placed together and 59 days since I last saw Ebbie on heat.

Ebbie is still lively and happy however I did notice some diarrhoea this morning. So she's been given 10mL of gastrolyte just to help with fluids and 0.5mL of calcium sandoz.

The painters doing the other side of the house today so I popped Ebbie on the floor and she should get about 10 hours of exercise time. She still has her sugar water and I also gave her a bowl of fresh feed with a good handful of hay which she was chowing down on when I left. The sugar water is certainly loved by Ebbie and Rosie. I find it surprising though as I certainly can't taste any sign of the glucose when I tried it, there's barely half a tsp in the 600ml bottle but it's clearly enough for them to notice. They have a plain water bottle next to the sugar one but they don't touch it until they've drained the sugar one.

Weight wise Ebbie is still steadily gaining though the rapid gain has tapered off somewhat and she's now at 1423g and seems to be gaining closer to 10g a day rather than 20.

Babies are still moving though the movements have changed. It used to be more like full body squirming but it's now closer to quick hard kicks, as if there's no longer enough room to do flips.

Her pelvic bones on top are open to a pinkie fingers width while below they are at half a pinkie fingers width so I think I can say with confidence we'll see babies within the week. Knowing my luck she'll litter on the animal room floor so I can spend hours trying to catch the babies LOL.

So far so good. Because of the diarrhoea (really just soft poos rather than liquid) my mother's checking on her hourly in case toxaemia rears it's ugly head, but I think the food and exercise time should ensure it's kept at bay.

Eeek

Well I forgot the painter was coming to do the house. Which basically means all the animals have to remain locked in their cages without much one on one time to keep them safe from the fumes. I'm also allergic to said fumes so have to be out of the house most of day.

Which basically leads to cranky human, cranky parrots, cranky bunny and cranky Ebbie. So far I've witnessed four tantrums from Atticus, five tantrums from Echo (his human, my mother is also out of town so the poor boy's lonely) and two absolutely spectacular tantrums courtesy of Luther. I had no idea bunnies could flip themselves on their backs. Even Ebbie now attempts kamikaze dives every time I open her cage. Clearly they all want their free range privileges back. Unfortunately that won;t be for a while. Though hopefully the guy will finish the area outside the animal room soon so I can set the pet gate back up and at least let Lu and Ebbie out.

But it does mean Ebbies going without her exercise which worries me. She does live in an eight foot cage but her mission is life seems to be to become the laziest sod that ever lived so she's not exactly moving. But she is still drinking her glucose water and she gets 0.5ml of calcium sandoz syrup daily so that's something.

Weight wise she had a bit of a weird up by 20g down by 20g thing happening for three days but we're now back to a gain of 20g every day.

Babies are still moving as well. Her left side seems to be emptier then the right but I can still movement there, though it's not as frequent as the other side so I 'think' there's only one baby on that side. The right side is very full and solid and has much more frequent movement all over so I think there's probably a couple of babies in there.

I really really need at least two babies from Ebbie and one has to be a sow, so Ebbie can be retired. If she give me two babies I can use the sow for breeding and have a new show pig as Eddie is also ready to be retired to the breeding pen. We're doing better at this wrapping gig though. Still plenty of wispy broken hairs but the majority of his coat is intact which makes me very happy. For my first go I am very proud of Eddie, even with all the issues we've had.

Changing to fleece wrappers has almost entirely stopped the freak outs he was doing. He still can;t bear me parting the hair over his hips and will scream about it and occasionally roll as I try to get the partings in for the butt wrapper but after that he's pretty good. He does occasionally kick at the side wrappers as they go in but once the hair tie is on he forgets they exist.

Updates

Well it's been a while since I updated. So I figured it's time I updated on all my babies.

Pipsqueak Edmund... well he's still in show coat... sort of. Now we've switched to polar fleece wrappers he's leaving his coat alone. I think he must've gotten nails hooked in the paper towels and from there torn the wrappers off. He has one chunk of shorter hair, of course in the golden bit that's along his spine so it's fairly obvious but other than that his coat isn't bad. He's no show winner (well maybe at the ACA being the only long but anyways) but he's been fantastic to learn on. We've reached a compromise with his wrappers as well. Every four days I pull the whole lot out and give him a blow out and redo his parts. It's the parting that he cannot bear so we've limited it. Then in between those days I remove a wrapper and comb and  rewrap that chunk of hair one by one which he has no issue with. Not sure why he hates having his coat parted but anyway. He's entered into the Gosford Show on the 6th of May so I'll take the grooming stand along and hopefully get his wraps back in after his class without too much of a fit... I hope. I would really like to get him to the May show, and then the Queens Birthday Show on the tenth of June and the NRCS Xmas in July Show on the 15th of July before retiring him to the breeding pen but we'll see.

Symphonia Laertes. What can I say? I adore La-La to bits he's my wee little possum and the chubbiest in the land. I'm so glad he's a boy so I can use him a foundation boar, if he was a sow I don't think I'd dare risk him. Markings wise I'm still doubtful that he's as good as people keep saying but hey we'll find out. He's also entered in the Gosford Show and will be going to the Queens Birthday and the NRCS show. They are all likely to have proper dally breeders entered so we'll see how he goes up against actual competition. He's a little fatso as well at 800g and not even four months old. He'll be a massive boy when he grows up. I have a roan bred black girl on order for him but the breeder might always have a run of roans or a run of boars. Hopefully though I should be able to find him a girly by October.

Pipsqueak Ebony, is as fat as fat can be. The babies are very energetic and I'm going to guess she has two very big bubs in there. Though I wouldn't say no to four or five squirmers. She's due from the 29th so just 13 days away! She's gaining about 30g a day and is already at 1400g (a gain of 400g since conception), god knows how large she'll be before she pops. She's now on her pregnant lady routine of eight hours running around in the animal room a day, a tsp of glucose in her 600mL water bottle and 0.5mL of calcium Sandoz Syrup daily. I'm hoping all together that this will prevent both toxaemia and hypocalceamia, fingers crossed.

Symphonia Rosaline is being taught the fine art of being a lady by Ebbie. This involves much sleeping, sedate popcorning and meticulous hygiene. Rosie's still a bit on the skinny side with the lanky teenager look. She's getting plenty of food and helping herself to Ebbie's glucose water so I'm sure she'll be nice and chubby in no time.

Pipsqueak Sterling is also a bit on the thin side but seems okay. Actually if anything he's lonely without his lady-love. But I'm hoping a nice quiet life with endless food should turn him into the chubber he should be. He's entered in the pet class at the Gosford Show.

Pipsqueak Fortinbras has finally put condition on and is no longer the scrawny baby he started as. However his coat is still as weird and ugly as ever and I'm starting to wonder if he'll ever grow out of the ugly phase.

Pipsqueak Feather is absolutely gorgeous and as psycho as ever. He's quite light on at only 950g but he seems quite content and certainly eats enough so I'm not too worried.

Pregnancy progressing...

Today I felt Ebbies babies move, it's the most amazing thing to feel. She now weighs 1320g, a gain of 300g since conception. Considering her breed and past history I assumed she would give me maybe two babies. From her size I'm going to go with a large litter or some whopping big babies.

I'm working on the assumption that she conceived on the 24th of Feb because I was quite sure she was on heat and I witnessed the mating. Considering her size though it may possibly have been earlier. So when you take into account that gestation can be from 65 to 72 days that places her due date no earlier than the 19th of April and no later than the 6th of May. But I'm fairly certain she was mated on the 24th so I think she'll litter between the 30th of April and 6th of May.

But considering she's most likely only 44 days along (six weeks, two days) I have to say her litter is rather precocious to be moving already, as movement usually starts between 7-8 weeks so the babies are 5-12 days early. Oh well maybe it'll mean she'll litter sooner.

So Ebbie will start her pregnant lady regime tomorrow. Which consists of...

1. Continuing to spend eight hours a day on the floor of the animal room. She adores it and races around, I'm hoping constant exercise will help prevent toxaemia.

2. Dextrose in her water bottle. I will also offer plain water in case she doesn't like the taste but what animal doesn't like sugar water? This will also prevent toxaemia.

3. 0.5mL Calcium Sandoz daily to prevent both hypocalceamia and toxaemia.

She is also now living with Rosie who helps make sure Ebbie stays moving being a rather cheeky baby. I'm hoping that young as she is Rosie's maternal instincts will kick in and she'll help out if Ebbie has trouble.

New Developments.

Two important things today.

Firstly Ebbie is confirmed pregnant. I quite definitely felt one little ball of bones. She's also put 100g on in the past two days. Babies are first felt around six weeks. So that would confirm the mating I witnessed on the 24th of Feb. So I'm rather excited. It also means that it's time to rearrange my cages. Sterling and La-La will move in together and Rosie and Ebbie will become cage mates. Assuming everyone gets on okay. But I'm quite excited for this litter. Friday is day 42 which is when I also start Ebbie on her pregnant lady routine of glucose, calcium sandoz syrup and even more run time on the floor. I should feel movement by Friday week!

Secondly me and Edmund came to a new agreement of the wrappers. He's stopped chewing but has learned he can tear the front wrappers with his back feet. Soooo.... I made him new wrappers out of fleece. Not even my parrot can chew through polar fleece and theres no way he can scratch it up. He can however still simply pull the wrappers out but now he wont damage his hair in doing so.

Oh and a third thing actually, Sterling's last lady love recently littered. His first proven litter. So I've asked the breeder for more info but so far have received nothing.

Thoughts on Dalmatians.

I have to admit I've become rather enamoured with the dallies. One of my first pigs was a dally (actually she was from the same lines as La-La) and I can't say I was fond of her. A bitier, more temperamental pig I've never met. But La-La is the total opposite, he's such a sweet baby. He's my little possum, his favourite thing is to curl up around the back of your neck with his head on your shoulder and stay there for hours.

Everyone who has seen him has mentioned that he'd make an excellent foundation boar and I have to admit the idea of little La-La's is beyond tempting. It would also give me two more breeds to show (dallies and self blacks). So I've decided to add Dallies to my stud. I actually have a self black sow on order now.

Sooo anyone who knows much about cavy breeds knows about lethals. Microthalmic babies born with a variety of congenital defects. Now I'm perfectly aware of this and have no intention of ever breeding a micro baby. Luckily there is a simple way around this. A dalmatian crossed with a self will never produce micro babies. Instead you will get 50% self and 50% dally. You only risk breeding a micro if you breed dally x dally (which gives you 25% micros, 25% selfs, 50% Dallies). I know ethically I could never risk having a micro born as I have quite strong beliefs about always breeding for health and vitality.

Well thats my thoughts for the day LOL.