Babywatch - Day 1

I wanted to write about how my baby guinea pigs settle in to their new home for the first week, in case it is helpful to anyone else with new babies and also so I can remember what happened.

I have to admit to being pretty worried about the babies for their first day.  They did eat a little bit of alfalfa hay overnight, but they had clearly stayed in the fleece cozy sack all night, and I was concerned that they might not have gotten any water.  The first thing I did was pick each one up to do a general check on alertness.  Each one seemed scared, but OK.  The next thing I did was swap out the cozy they'd spent the night in with a new fleece tunnel and an upside-down shoebox with one end cut out.  I figured the cozy had been pooped and peed on all night, so for sanitary reasons, I wanted something fresh.

Next, I cut up a few pieces of green pepper and put them on the floor next to the shoebox entrance.  Both babies seemed to be happiest in there, so I wanted them to have access to something to eat.  I also moved a dish with alfalfa in it over to the shoebox.

The babies still didn't come out, but I started hearing a few quiet noises throughout the morning.  At noon, I weighed each of them - one was 12 oz and the other was 12.5 oz.  When I put them back in the cage, I put them in a different place than the shoebox, so they'd be forced to explore a little, and they did a little, but they quickly decided to hide in the fleece tunnel.  So I left them alone for the afternoon and ran some errands.  My husband put some fresh green pepper in the cage while I was gone.  He said it looked like they'd eaten a few of the pieces I'd put out in the morning, but he was concerned about their water intake and wanted to see if they'd eat something fresh.  We didn't see them eat the green pepper, but within a couple of hours, all the pieces were gone.

Finally, by about 6 pm (22.5 hours after I brought them home), the babies began to explore the cage and were soon zooming around faster than I could believe.  And they also started drinking, and drinking, and drinking.  I felt so relieved!

They were still pretty scared if any of us moved too much or spoke too loudly - they would run and hide right away.  But they were definitely very active for several hours, and even popped their heads out of the tunnel when I put some more alfalfa hay in their dish.  I went to bed feeling pretty confident that they were going to settle in to their new home just fine.