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Introducing Sow To Bonded Couple

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Hairbear5

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Hello everyone,

This is my first time signing up to a piggy forum. Better late than never! I have been an owner for 2 and a half years and recently adopted my 5th piggy.

I have a neutered male pig (Quincy 2,1/2yrs) and a sow (Klonoa 9months) that have been living together for nearly 4 months. I decided to get them another sow friend (Raisin) -she is around the same age as the other female. I heard that males naturally live with more than one female.
I introduced the females on neutral ground for 2 hours, there was a bit of nipping and chasing/rumbling, nothing more. I'm wondering whether to keep introducing the two females first before I put them all together, or introduce the three of them at the same time? Raisin is very shy so i'm worried about her being overwhelmed by two pigs at once. Klonoa seems to be dominant and Raisin is submissive. If the bonding works, Raisin will be joining Klonoa and Quincy in their 4ftx3ft pen.

I hope someone can give me advise on bonding all three of them
Thanks, Kayleigh x
 
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Hello! Welcome to the forum, sorry for the late reply, we had some technical issues and your post got a little buried :(

Will tag @Wiebke into this for bonding advice as she is very very knowledgeable
 
Hello everyone,

This is my first time signing up to a piggy forum. Better late than never! I have been an owner for 2 and a half years and recently adopted my 5th piggy.

I have a neutered male pig (Quincy 2,1/2yrs) and a sow (Klonoa 9months) that have been living together for nearly 4 months. I decided to get them another sow friend (Raisin) -she is around the same age as the other female. I heard that males naturally live with more than one female.
I introduced the females on neutral ground for 2 hours, there was a bit of nipping and chasing/rumbling, nothing more. I'm wondering whether to keep introducing the two females first before I put them all together, or introduce the three of them at the same time? Raisin is very shy so i'm worried about her being overwhelmed by two pigs at once. Klonoa seems to be dominant and Raisin is submissive. If the bonding works, Raisin will be joining Klonoa and Quincy in their 4ftx3ft pen.

I hope someone can give me advise on bonding all three of them
Thanks, Kayleigh x

Hi! Sorry for not answering sooner, I was out all day on Saturday and then the forum was down.

It sounds very promising, so I would introduce them as a group. Initial acceptance depends on acceptance by the top piggy; the others generally fall in line. In my experience it doesn't matter at all, as it all comes down to how they can ultimately resolve any dominance issues and wether they click. You can run into trouble if Raisin turns out to b more dominant than Klonoa and Klonoa not wanting to back down. You just have to sit it out once you have committed to a full intro. The dominance phase is never pleasant to sit through when first the leadership and then the overall hierarchy is slowly decided and newly established. In group bondings, it always works down from the top and you see the worst of the dominance behaviour from the piggy just above on the ladder.

The good thing with cross gender and sow bondings is that you can separate overnight if tensions are persistently high and you are not getting anywhere. Things will often be much clamer on the second day. However, ideally they settle down enough that they can move back into their freshly cleaned and rearranged cage (minus any hideys with just one exit). Each bonding is different; some go right up to the wire but are careful to not step over the line, others are as smooth as a glove. Most bondings are somewhere in between. The trick is to ideally just sit it out and interfere as little as possible unless things are starting to really escalate very quickly if an exchange of messages is understood the wrong way. It all depends on the individual character combination and the resulting dynamics!

You will find our guides at the top helpful:
https://www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/threads/introducing-and-re-introducing-guinea-pigs.38562/
https://www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/threads/dominance-behaviours-in-guinea-pigs.28949/
https://www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/threads/sow-behaviour.38561/
 
Hi
Thankyou so much for the info. The links are really useful too :) I'm going to bath and bond them all this Sunday (iv let Raisin settle in for a bit first).
 
Hi
Thankyou so much for the info. The links are really useful too :) I'm going to bath and bond them all this Sunday (iv let Raisin settle in for a bit first).

Bathing is only necessary when re-introducing nearly fallen-out boars in order to remove any excessive testosterone stink from their coats. Otherwise, bathing is an added stress factor and doesn't contribute to a bonding that you want to be as relaxed as possible. Whether the piggies ultimately gel depends on the character/dominance dynamics and not on the bathing. Bathing is currently touted far too much as the solve-all tip that it is NOT on social media.
If you really wish to, you will have much more success by gently wiping the piggies with each other's body scent so it mingles before intros.
 
Ok then, i'll give it a go without bathing. Iv only bonded boars before now, I know it doesn't solve everything lol. The scent mingling sounds good! :) Thanks.
 
The bonding was a success! Iv just moved them to a bigger pen, there is allot of popcorning going on. I will be getting my other boar neutered soon. I hope it will be the same outcome :)
 
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