Bullying

[nibbles]

I have 5 boys that have lived together happily for about 6 months, nothing has changed with their cage, group or care but about a month ago 4 began picking on one, they pulled his fur out and left scratchs so I seperated him, he lived indoors and whilst he seemed to enjoy our attention he clearly missed piggy company so i gradually reintroduced them over the course of a week and a half and all was fine untill last thursday when we started shutting the hutch door, its attatched to a covered run but now its getting colder i felt it best to close the door for warmth, now he has a balled patch with a scratch again so how do i sort this out, hes clearly not happy on his own but hes obviously bottom of the pack, is it best to let them sort it out amongst themselves? , they let him drink and share food and ive seen him cuddled up with all of them , hes been treatedfor mites incase that was the issue, i havent actualy seen them go for him but there is lots of sqeaking at odd times but when i go to see why it stops

 

[Wiebke]

The problem with your boar group is that your boys are a) obviously in the middle of the big teenage hormones and b) very much at the bottom end of what can be considered a stable bachelor herd when it comes to the size. Neither factor helps with the stability of the group. If things don't calm down and your boy continues to be picked on, I would rather split your boys into a working a couple and a (hopefully) working trio. So far, I have yet to hear of a quartet of boars that has been stable for more than a few months at best.

The loud squeaking is actually submission.
http://www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/threads/dominance-behaviours-in-guinea-pigs.28949/

 

[nibbles]

They arent all the same age tho, they range between 1.5yrs up to 5yrs

 

[TamTam]

How sad!
that poor piggy. One thing doing a funny walk & rumbling but hurting another lil piggy. So sad. Sounds like you have been given some good advice.
I am guessing then they need to all be similar ages for large groupings to be successful xx

 

[1GuineaPig1]

I'm sorry, I don't really know what to do.
Sometimes some boars just aren't meant to be together. The best advice I can give is that you should get your lonely piggy a friend, but if that is not possible I'm not really sure what else to do...
Good Luck!