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Bonding Piggies?

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Logiebear

Logiebear

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I am new to all this and have found this forum amazing. I have a question though and I can't find the answer any where and not sure where to post this.

How easy is it to bond different piggies. If I wanted to keep 2 together but got them at diff times and from diff places how would I do it?

Is it easier to bond females to males or same sex couples?

Do their age matter at all?

What if I wanted 3 or 4 together, how would I go about bonding them?

Sorry if this is a lot of questions bur I have bonded rabbits before and it was great but I have no experience with piggies. Thanks in advance

Suzanne x
 
Suzanne,
i'm sorry i don't know either, as i'm new to this too, but i'm sure some 'old hand' will be along soon will good advice. i will definitely be watching to see what is said.
Becca
 
Bonding between females is usually quite easy. Bonding between males is ok provided there is a significant age difference eg baby boy + older boy (eg 6 - 8 weeks/18months 2 years) The closer the age, the more difficult, as they are all hormonal, and each wants to be the dominant one. 3 or 4 together would either have to be all girls, or 1 neutered boar and the rest girls. Definitely only one boar with the girls. A neutered boar/girl bonding is usually reasonably easy.
These are all only guidelines, and there are of course exceptions.
Hope this helps. x
 
i agree with nutmeg ;)

i'm fairly new to this, but have a group of 7 females and they get on really well.

just introduced them slowly. started with 2 girls, who where already bonded, then added a baby. after a week i then introduced 4 more, but did it one at a time, and sat with them for about half hour between introducing the next piggy. have got to say, introducing babies to older girls does seem to be the easiest.

i also have 3 girls and a neautered male, who also get on really well.
 
When you introduce new guinea pigs, make sure it's always on neutral grounds (no home advantage for one guinea pig). The bathroom floor or even the bathtub with a towel in the bottom for grip will do fine. Make sure that you have plenty of free time (at least several hours in one go).

Make sure that you read up on the behaviour beforehand (sticky thread at the top of behaviour section; females display similar behaviour when bonding), so you know the danger signs for possible fights. DO NOT interfere unless there are real fights (tip: never put your hand in between fighting boars, unless you want to risk being bitten!)
The behaviour might seem pretty rough to us humans, and there can be a lot of threatening and posturing. If you separate, your guinea pigs have to start right back at square one again. Once you have committed, ride it out, unless one guinea pig is really going for the other and there is blood.

Dominance related behaviour (rumbling, humping, nipping, sometimes teeth chattering) can last for weeks with some piggies until they have sorted their relationship to their own satisfaction. That doesn't mean they can't be best of friends afterwards.

If you introduce a neutered male to a girl/girls, he can go on testosterone overload for a day or two, but afterwards they will usually have a very stable relationship, as the dominance issue doesn't come into play.

Ideally, you have boys in twosomes or, if you want to be flexible in numbers, have any number of girls with one neutered boar.
 
So can you have a couple of girls together without a neutered boar or should they have the boar for happiness?

Thanks for the responses it is great to learn all this about the little piggies!:<>
 
The boar is for happiness; you can have girls together without a boar. It's just a good way to give a boar a home that would otherwise have been a loner, as some don't like being paired with another boy.

In the wild, a core group of sows will live together with one top boar, while bachelors will hang loosely around the group and mate with the younger females to avoid in-breeding, waiting for their chance for a bid at the top spot.

I have had two girls without a boar, and it was fine, even though they were both touching three years, when I bonded them. Then one died, and I couldn't get another girl, so I let the remaining piggy choose her own neutered boy, which was a very loving relationship. Now I have my neutered boar with two sows (soon to be four), and it's great as well.
 
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I'm having the same problem with my boars. It's taking rather a long time for them to get used to eachother. So I'm guessing it's easier to bond opposite sex piggies? I'm not sure. But I'm sure any guineas can bond. You just need the time to be on your guard all the time incase there are any bloody fights.

What I am doing is making sure that the piggies can see eachother at all times. So they never leave eachothers scents, and will eventually (and hopefully), will get used to eachother through that.

If they have a constant supply of hay for them, they will most likely just sit there and eat and ignore eachother for a while. That's what mine do.

Hope I helped!

Charl & Pip xx
 
I have 6 girls all living together just fine. Started with 2, then introduced 2 more, then 2 more.

Each time we introduced more it was in a run in the garden and then they went back into the cage which was either thoroughly cleaned or made larger or moved about or a combination of all 3 things so it wasn't a cage where anyone had a particular teritory.

My 6 get along fine - I think girls are easier to bond than boys (but I don't have any boars so no experience there)
 
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