Bonding session today, not sure if its failed?

GuineaRanger

GuineaRanger

Junior Guinea Pig
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Hi all,

I've read the bonding guides but haven't found anything specific to help with my bonding today.

Wilbur is a neutured boar (a friend of whom asked if we would have him as he lost his cage mate some months ago) who has been living side by side with my 2 females for about 2 months or more now, Initial signs when we first put them together as an initial look appeared as if she had accepted him into the group before we said we would take him on as pet but then we had them live side by side for a while before a proper bonding session.

Scoot is a very dominant sow - even with us she squeals at us when we have to catch her or when we stroke her sides she squeals high pitched at us. She is quite fearful, even now after having her for a year she always runs away from us when approaching the cage, and when we put her back after she has been held, even just for a minute, she wees instantly as soon as she is put back like she has just had the worst time of her life.

This is how thei interaction has been all day since 12pm: they are both eating hay (about 1m apart) and scoot decides suddenly she wants squeal high pitched loudly at him, they then both squeal, raise heads, they chatter, and he always runs away after about 10secs of that, and she often pursues him for maybe 5 to 15 secs. (She doesn't always pursue him though). She then stops pursuing him by herself randomly.

They have had little scuffles where they have ran around in a circle together, faces touching each others sides, if that makes sense.

And then normally when scoot has calmed down they go back to being quite far apart, mostly ignoring each other, and at first not even being able to see each other. They had 2 open ended tunnels in there but it seems that whenever they "bump" into each other (when he's rumbling at merlin for example or one of them has come out of the tunnel unexpectedly) scoot gets very upset at him so we have removed the tunnels since.

Then they go back to eating hay separately again for a bit.

Wilbur has not attempted any kind of mounting yet either. Initially he did a fair bit of rumblestrutting and attempts to sniff her butt and mouth etc and to say hello but she has not really changed her behaviour since putting them together, 6 hours ago now.

Here are some videos to explain her behaviour:






I do not know if this is normal dominance behaviour, if she hates him and doesn't want him in the group, she is just fearful of him and needs more time or whether this is completely failed. Can anyone help?

Thanks
 
Scoot the female is the black and white one, Wilbur the male is the white, ginger eyes one, sorry forgot to distinguish who was who.
 
I’m not very experienced with sow/boar bondings. It does look tense but I don’t know if it’s enough to stop the bonding. Has she ‘caught’ up to him at all? If so, what has she done?

When bonding, there shouldn’t be any hides in the area at all. So I wouldn’t put anything in. Just hay and veg at the usual time.

I’ll tag @Piggies&buns @VickiA @PigglePuggle
 
There really shouldn’t be anything other than hay in the bonding pen as otherwise it complicates things. I would only add completely open beds (cuddle cups) when the acceptance phase was complete and then at least one for each pig and one left over so there’s nothing to fight about. Tunnels of this size can create extra tension during a bonding.
In the first video there was an event at around 2mins 50 that looks perilously close to a full on fight. I’d probably have called it a day at that point and separated them for today and then tried again after a night’s rest but in a fully emptied out bonding pen where it’s easier to observe the herd dynamics. However, I’ve no idea over what period these videos were taken.

In my experience bonding a group can take hours. I’d only consider it a success when all the piggies have a period of calm together, they have shared a meal (veggies), had a sleep, woken back up, had some washing…. In these videos all I see is tension and it’s not at all clear if she’s going to accept him. He does back off, but she goes after him.

I’ve no idea whether things have improved or not, but my view is that unless things look a whole lot calmer, I would separate them and try again another day.
 
Thanks for your reply.

The tunnels were in there for about 2 hours, then I took them out. The videos were filmed over a few hours. I did not have enough clean beds for them to have extras and tbh do not want to put any in and cause more tension, they had a couple of covered areas but that's all I wanted to provide after the tunnels caused problems.

I did a post a few months back about whether she had accepted him into the group and Wiebke advised it looked as though she had. They groomed side by side, even lay next to each other to sleep ate veggies etc.

Wilbur actually got poorly right after we got him and had an abcess that needed operating on(twice!) , and then had some weird foot problem after his operations and he needed to be separate anyway to monitor his poos, bleeding etc. He had finally healed really only 2 weeks ago so that's why he's been living side by side since their first meeting, plus the RSPCA advice says have them live side by side for a few weeks or months while they get to know each other and give them the best chance, and knowing scoot being extremely doninant/fearful decided it would give her a good chance to get to know him.

I have seen scoot not accept a boar in the past - a year ago I introduced her to my other neutured boar and she 100% did not accept him she hounded him incessantly (did power-lie-ins, high pitched squealing non stop) and her behaviour towards Wilbur compared to him is different. On one of the vids I posted you can see her eating hay beside him not really bothered about his presence.

Whilst living side by side scoot doesn't squeal at him or hound him at the bars or anything like that, in fact they have lay down almost side by side at the bars.

Knowing scoot I do beleive she's probably fear aggressive as honestly she is like that with us - she "squeals" high pitched at us if we stroke her beyond her neck, she kicks us off too, she chatters sometimes if we look at her in the cage, she wees instantly as soon as she is put back in her cage after a short hold, and is extremely skittish still after a year if having her (we don't have kids and live in a quiet house).

She had a bad start to life her cage mate is her mother (who isnt as bad as scoot but looks very different to most pigs I've seen I think she was the runt of her litter or simply underfed during her time as a youngster and while pregnant) and when we collected them from someone who was selling them they were in soaking conditions living off iceberg lettuce, dirty water and the daughter of the person selling them was very disabled and apparently often bashed into their cage (not her fault) and scoot was only 6 months old when we got her so had lived like that all her life up untill that point.

I'll give them more time side by side I think and see how it goes in a few weeks.
 
So they were together but had to separated and this is a rebond. There is a risk that the separation could have done some damage to their relationship and she may not necessarily accept him back even if they were previously ok

Laying against the bars in a divided cage can actually be territory marking exercise not a friendly gesture.

It’s always tricky for us though as we only get a very small snapshot.

I hope they do decide they like each other and can work things out!
 
They were together for about an hour and have been separate since. We didn't plan on having another pig at all - suddenly a friend of ours asked if we could take him on as his cage mate died and he was on his own, we said we will try but we won't know unless scoot accepts him. So we did the initial introduction while his original owner was still here, I did my post on here whilse it was going on, after which I said to the owner it appears as if she has accepted him so we will keep him.

We hadn't cleaned their cages out, washed bedding etc at that point as we literally had no time plus we work some weekends. So he was in a separate cage (not side by side) for a week while we sorted stuff out. In that week that's when we noticed his abcess and here we are now.

Yeh I've seen her do power lie-ins before, she isn't doing that definitely. But it's possibly Wilbur that's the problem lol
 
Oh I see, so the videos were the initial bonding (the hour they had originally would not count) not a reintroduction.

I have to agree with Vicki though, it does look tense on the videos.
I think having them live side by side for a bit longer and then trying them in a bonding pen again is worth a try. If things don’t settle and improve beyond what we can see in the video though, then I would say it’s possibly not going to be long term successful
 
Yeh sorry this was the proper bonding session, the first time they met a few months back was just to see if the girls initially accepted him which advice said sounded like she did, and then do a proper bonding session the weekend after and give us time to clean cage out thoroughly, buy new/wash beds etc. We knew there was a chance the bonding could fail though when they had their proper session. It's just his owner "needed to get rid" of him so really didn't want him ending up somewhere awful.
 
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