Introducing a baby to my 18 month old boars

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Sharon.Mackay

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Hi everyone. We have 2 gorgeous boys and really want to introduce another piggy as a playmate. They are about 18 months old. I just wondered the best way to go about it? I assume a baby would be a better choice? I would love some advicexx>>>
 
hi Sharon

I have no experience of introducing a baby to a pair but we had a bereaved piggy who was about 4.5 years old at the time and we introduced a 5 week old baby to him.

Everything went well...I mean there was the dominance act from the older one as if to say I'm the boss and a bit of sniffing etc but they now live happily together as the baby knows who the boss is :))

hope all goes well

Karen x
 
Trios can work out, but not necessarily so. You can very easily end up with three single boars if things don't work out and quite likely have to separate at least one boar. Personally, I wouldn't try to fix what is not broken and rather go for a second pair of boars, or if you REALLY want to, try and find a rescue that allows your boars to come for some boar dating to find whether there is a suitable boar (it may well be another laid back adult that fits in with your boys and not a youngster) or whether you better leave them be as they are.

Boar bonds really rely on character compatibility more than anything else to make them work in the long term.

http://www.guineapigrehome.org.uk/gp/centres.asp
 
You could always consider another pair in a separate cage if you want to extend your piggy family, I've now got two pairs of boars and apart from obviously needing an extra cage, it's not much extra hassle as I feed them all at the same time and tend to clean the cages out one after the other too.

ETA- Sorry just read the reply above :)
 
I can tell you about my experience of introducing new pigs, if it is any help.

When Freddie's brother, Ringo died we wanted a new guinea pig as soon as possible because you could really see that he was lonely. We were considering all our options and eventually decided to get a young boar.

Freddie is a very laid back, friendly guinea pig, and very very gentle (he was very loving towards Ringo during his illness). Freddie is also rather...large. We chose a good sized young guinea pig called Wes and tried to introduce him - and Wes started being agressive! We had to take Wes out and we waited until the next day and tried it again. They were in the empty hutch so had lots of space, and Freddie was curious about Wes and went up to him, and Wes started chattering. So Freddie left him alone and went to eat some food, however Wes kept going after him and eventually had poor Freddie corned so we had to whip him out! Sadly, it didn't work out with Wes.

We then decided to go for an older boar, and we found Nelson at a rescue centre. He was also laid back and only slightly bigger than Freddie. They were a good match and their introduction went well. There was never a dominant pig in the Freddie-Ringo pairing, but we think that Nelson is possibly the dominant one now as he quite often rumbles and tries to hump poor Freddie! He's not too bad anymore, but he still does it from time to time. (We actually think this may have been a sly trick to get the best spot in the run).

So introducing a new boar to a single one worked well. Adding a third to an existing pair can be a bit more difficult because, in a pair, if there's going to be a dominant pig, you will usually only have one because one will 'beat' the other one to the post, so to speak. The problem with three is that two might decide they're boss, causing issues.

I'd try to pick your new piggy based on personality rather than age, as you can see from the Wes example, being a baby doesn't always mean he's going to be nice! A rescue/rehoming centre is a good place to go because they can usually tell you a bit about their personalities.


I introduced my two new girls (young) to my three other girls (they don't live together, but share a run) and that went well. There's not much difference in their age or size. They were sniffing each others bottoms for a while, but other than that they're fine! Ace isn't so keen on them, but she's not agressive towards them, and Amy seems to be 'mothering' the new piggies a bit - she follows them everywhere!


Try to introduce them in a place that is sort of neutral. Introducing them in the piggies hutch may cause the new one to feel threatened, or the older ones to try and protect their territory.
 
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