An Introduction to Tink, Queen of the Herd

Tink, Our Queen of the Herd

 Meet our Sow, Tink.  She is the Alpha in our herd of three female Guinea Pigs.  Her personality is one of a queen in charge of her flock.  Until October she held (mostly) alpha status against Oreo, her sister.  Every 14 days or so, we would hear her rumble stomping around the pen challenging, well nothing really, as Oreo would be lying in her hidey just trying to chill whilst Tink pranced around the cage looking like the hulk.  Oreo, for the most part accepted this (unless she was in heat) in which case Oreo would run up to Tink, try and mate with her and then run away.  Tink really was the aggressor when it came to dominance between the two, never letting Oreo forget that she was the boss.

When it came to us humans however, Tink could not stand us, she was happy to have floor time if we opened the gate and let them walk out of their own free will but piggie cuddles where out of the question.  She wheeked and squirked, moaned and complained when we tried to give her hugs.  At times I am sure I heard her say "Put me down you stupid human, I am in charge and have better things to be doing than sitting on your lap... put me down!"

We all still love her as she has that adorable little squirrel face or if you catch her standing sideways she looks totally like a little mini sheep. She is also very caring towards her herd, although we never noticed at first as there were only two of them.  When Oreo was on medication for her eye injury we actually caught Tink trying to clean her eye which was very sweet. Although we had to try and stop her from licking the eye drops out of Oreos' eye, it did still show a different side to Tinks' personality.

We did notice however, that upon adding a third piggy girl her personality has changed somewhat. We did keep the new addition in a separate habitat for a while. The two set ups were close together but Tink and the new addition seemed to be getting very stressed.  Belle, the new addition, would constantly stand in the corner on her hay wheeking and trying to see the girls.  Tink would constantly stand on the other side wheeking back and trying to see Belle.   When Tink and Oreo got out for floor time, Tink would run over and try and chew through the bars. It was almost like watching her trying to jailbreak Belle out of her pen. Belle copied Tink and started chewing the bars from inside the cage and it was just heartbreaking to see. After one week of quarantine, instead of the two which is recommended, we decided to move them all in together. (There will be a separate post about how we did this as we did not just put her in with the others immediately).

Once Belle had joined the herd, Tink changed dramatically, she took on a very maternal role, cleaning the new baby (13 weeks old) and following her around for the first few days.  Once, when Oreo played too rough with Belle, and Belle wheeked, Tink came rushing over and blocked Oreos path to Belle sniffing at her to make sure she was OK.  Tink also does not challenge Oreo much any more. She still rumble struts when she is in heat but it is not nearly as bad as it was before.  The other night, Belle let out a loud wheek for no apparent reason, and both, Tink and Oreo came running out of the hay pen to check on her.  I checked her too and she was not hurt.

The Girls living in harmony

As for us humans, Tink has let me pet her in the pen several times now without running away or giving us 'that look of disgust' and I also got to hold her for around 10 minutes before she started squirking indignantly at me.  This is a miracle, truly it is.

We are still learning lots about our little herd and their different roles and personalities.  We have had Tink and Oreo since 26th October 2017, they were one years old, around the 12th September this year  and up until we added Belle to the herd we thought we did know them.   This change has been amazing to watch in both of them. They all seem a little more calm and settled.
I will be discussing all our pets personalities over the next month as they are all so different.  In the meantime I will leave you with Tink, Oreo and Belle saying goodbye for now.