We've just had a mini miracle here at Darkwing.
Yesterday morning one of my lilac sows dropped two really pretty lilac sows. As I rearranged the cages to bring her and the other litters closer to the house I was struck by the intuition that something was very wrong with the sow. She looked fine and was tending her babies normally so I resolved that if she was looking poorly in the morning I would take her to the vet.
Well its morning and there was a third baby, a big one, in the cage with a third placenta. Somehow she hadn't delivered all of her babies yesterday. Ordinarily that would surely spell her doom... once the kindling had finalised i would have though the remaining baby would have died inside her, maybe it did but by some miracle she was able to birth it. The placenta was still fairly fresh so it would have occurred only a couple of hours ago so the last baby was born between 15 and 20 hours after the first two.
For a piece of trivia; cavies do not carry a litter of foetuses in the one birthsac. Each baby has it's own sac and own placenta so should a stillborn occur it won't damage or interfere with development of the others.
Yesterday morning one of my lilac sows dropped two really pretty lilac sows. As I rearranged the cages to bring her and the other litters closer to the house I was struck by the intuition that something was very wrong with the sow. She looked fine and was tending her babies normally so I resolved that if she was looking poorly in the morning I would take her to the vet.
Well its morning and there was a third baby, a big one, in the cage with a third placenta. Somehow she hadn't delivered all of her babies yesterday. Ordinarily that would surely spell her doom... once the kindling had finalised i would have though the remaining baby would have died inside her, maybe it did but by some miracle she was able to birth it. The placenta was still fairly fresh so it would have occurred only a couple of hours ago so the last baby was born between 15 and 20 hours after the first two.
For a piece of trivia; cavies do not carry a litter of foetuses in the one birthsac. Each baby has it's own sac and own placenta so should a stillborn occur it won't damage or interfere with development of the others.