Introduction to Belle

Belle at around 12 Weeks old

This last few weeks have bee total chaos in the MacLean Household but in a good way, a productive way. First of all I have bee diligently building a new habitat for Tyr, our Roborovski. This takes up the whole kitchen, so there have been a couple of take out nights for tea whilst I have been sawing and sanding, drilling and sanding some more. As well as this I had to make an additional, temporary home for a new female Guinea Pig.  Belle is our newest member and was adopted from Pets at home.  We try to adopt or rescue our pets now instead of buying them form new stock. Building 2 cages in the same space is a bit hectic but this is what I came up with.

Belles temporary cage that we put next to Oreo and Tink 

As there are 3 Guinea Pigs now, we can officially call them a herd. We kept the new addition, Belle,  in quarantine for around a week (some owners advised two).   The reason we introduced her into the pen early was that she was chewing the bars on her own pen constantly trying to get to them. Also when they had floor time, Tink, the alpha was constantly trying to jail break her by chewing the bars on the outside of her pen too. They were constantly wheeking at each other too which caused more bar chewing.  We felt that it was better for all of them if we added her to the herd earlier rather than stress them all out and make them ill.

Belle, not so small now 

All of the Guinea Pigs were getting stressed as they all wanted to be together and when we allowed them floor time together Tink instantly took on a mothering role, cleaning and licking her.  When she panicked and ran to a corner, Oreo immediately covered her to stop us picking her up. It was really clear we would not have a problem adding Belle to the original pen and hutch. We are new to Herds and Guinea pig politics but they were pretty clear about wanting Belle in with them, and Belle was pretty clear about wanting to be with them.  So they are all now in the original hutch and pen that I build for Tink and Oreo. 

Queen Tink - Herd Alpha 

Tink has taken on the role of Alpha with dignity and grace and as long as Oreo still gets her hugs she is happy to share her home with Belle.

 Belle is really quite tame compared to Tink and Oreo at her age and all is well within our little happy, wheeky, herd of Guinea Pigs.

So it has been an eventful week but with many happy little popcorn's and wheeks, and of-course, I did get my hamster habitat built too, which will be updated here soon.

All three about 7 month later in the garden