Hello
I’m really hoping someone might be able to offer some advise. I rescued a guineapig from Pets at home and he is around 5 months old. They separated him from the pack as he was being boisterous. Now I’m trying to find him a mate as I want him to have company.
Now I have had several different pieces of advise. One was to get him neutered and bonded with a pair of girls. The issue I have here is putting him through the operation and then getting a new cage set up. The second was to try him with a baby boar. The breader suggested trying them in a run together, taking them home and seeing how they get on. My concern with this is they don’t. Then I have two separate boars.
Help, I’m so worried about it all.
Thanks
Hi and welcome!
There is not a one size fits all solution for your issue; you have to weigh up all the pros and cons as well as respecting your local availabilities like access to a good vet or a good standard rescue, the majority of which offer boar dating but in addition of only rehoming only fully quarantined, vet cared, healthy and properly sexed piggies of all ages (including rescue born babies from incoming already pregnant sows if they have them), most offer boar dating at the rescue and will also support you during the settling in phase and remain a place of recourse for the whole life of your adoptee if your bond is getting into trouble.
An increasing number of rescues also offers 'residential' or 'full' boar dating where your boy will stay at the rescue for several days for introductions with promising candidates and for a large part of the bonding process to take place. This means that your boy will be coming home with a friend only if their has been success, but with a much stabler bond that has been stress tested before leaving. This is a service you won't get anywhere else.
Please be aware that in this country anybody can call themselves a breeder or a rescue without licensing and control, and the results can be accordingly with any shade and mix in between. We can only vouch for our carefully vetted rescues, but we can fully endorse them as by far the safest place to get your piggies from without any nasty surprises and having their backing in case a bond is not working out down the line. As with all piggy bonds, mutual liking and character compatibility comes long before age.
You may also want to take your boy's age and personality into account. He is obviously a very dominant teenager coming right up to the age where his testosterone output will reach its life time high with his testicles fully descended. Unfortunately this also means that he will be at the most difficult bonding age in the coming weeks - and being a boisterous and dominant boy with testosterone literally thrumming through his veins right now, he is likely going to be a bit too much of a handful for most boars of any age!
For this reason, you may want to consider neutering and bonding with a sow more seriously. Thankfully, operation practices have moved on, as has the number of boars being neutered, so it is no longer something to be considered as a last resort. The best operating vets in this country come as close to a 100% success rate as any surgeon can reasonably get. Finding a good vet is key to neutering.
Here is our recommended vet's locator. We may be able to help you wit particular recommendations or personal experience if you please added your county to location in account details (via clicking on your username on the top bar) so it appears with every post you make. We have members and enquiries literally from all over the world but are doing our best to tailor any advice to what is locally relevant or available instead of keeping things as general as possible.
The big advantage of neutering is that cross gender bondings are the most stable of all pairings with an extremely low fail rate once initial acceptance has happened. Dating at a good rescue with a mandatory pregnancy watch upon arrival and with having a guarantee that any babies are properly sexed and separated at the correct age will also take care of that particular potential problem, which we regularly see the sorry results of in our pregnancy support section for people with a surprise pregnancy.
Please take the time to read the guides below for more in-depth information. I have tried to do my best to list all the various pros and cons and potential problems openly to allow our members to make as informed a decision as possible which way is going to be the best for them in their individual circumstances and location. Any of the recommended rescues you might consider for dating/adoption could also tell you which vet they themselves are using for neutering their own difficult to bond boars, so they are available for sow dating. This would mean access to a practised vet.
Neutering is not a quick-fix solution because you also have to factor in a full 6 weeks post-op wait before your boy is 100% safe to meet girls, but the advantages are some very major ones for the long run.
A Comprehensive Guide to Guinea Pig Boars
Neutered / De-sexed Boars And Neutering Operations: Myths, Facts and Post-op Care
Boars: Teenage, Bullying, Fighting, Fall-outs And What Next?
Personally I am a big fan of neutered 'husboars'; I have had a string of them going back decades and have currently got seven, all living with one or several sows of their own.
Several of them have been 'unbondable' or fallen-out teenage boars, but they have all lived (or are living) the happiest of boar lives - and I can enjoy the benefits of keeping both genders together without any worries.
I know that I am not making your job any easier right now, but hopefully especially the information in the links will allow you think things through and make more informed decision. We are always here to answer any further questions or help you with recommendations.
