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Pepperdog

Pepperdog

Adult Guinea Pig
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Flash
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he is right at the back of the double triangle run, behind fudge

this is an hour and a half after he went in with the girls, they have had a few more spates of chasing but they all mostly wanted to eat grass
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as you can see fudge is not that bothered by her new pal, infact her and her mum minty have been the most welcoming. Crystal has been very subdued and stayed out the way for the longest time, but she has had a good sniff of flash and has also been following him about like the others.

had to carefully pull the front back to get a clear picture, but minty and flash nomming grass
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a better picture of him
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and to prove crystal was in there too
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she is now in the tunnel hidey, all three girls came over to him shortly after I took this
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he is such a sweetie, does the big I am some of the time but he is likgin his gang of girls, they seem to like him back, fudge is very drawn to him for some reason.
 
Good to hear the introduction went well, beautiful piggies and Well Done with the introductions.

xx
 
I was really worried about how crystal would take to him, i thought she would be the problem pig, but she has calmed right down since he came into the herd, like she didnt like being boss and is happy to sit back a bit. Mind you she did take the biggest bed and although two would fit she hogged it all :))

I couldnt stop grinning while they were getting to know each other, I borrowed an indoor cage incase things went badly and I have a month for the settling in period to finish (just incase it take a little while for them to accept him). But I am hoping that this is the stormy part and the calm will happen.

He does the ramp both directions and I hope this will encourage the girls to follow him down - there is more hay down there and food, but they at the moment only like to go up rolleyes

They are all completely spark out in the hutch, I have never seen tired piggies before, they are so cute and everytime I go to check on them, they are asleep :))

I phoned the rescue and let them know how the introduction went, thought they would like to know and it was a nice thing to do considering they have looked after him for 3 months
 
He is gorgeous, they all look very happy together..x)x)
 
Awwww....I have been waiting for photos...thank you for updating.

I think they will be OK, you can usually tell pretty early on if the sows are going to reject him. May be a bit of a cuffullal when they are in season but this is also a period when the bond with the boar becomes stronger too.

Its so nice to hear happy rescuing/bonding stoies. Makes me smile.

:)p
 
She (I think you said she, but I can't remember LOL) is so cute! I used to have a pig named Twix who looked exactly like her. Now I have Elvis (my profile picture) and he looks like her too but he's Abyssinian. I really like black and tan guinea pigs!
 
A quick update.

They all had a good night and flash has really made a difference to the girls, for starters both minty and fudge are going up and down the ramp with ease (and I was worried it might have been too steep despite being the whole length of the hutch), so three piggies have found a whole extra room with hideys and I can now put the veg down there to eat - more room.

They have also discovered the two other hay racks and food bowls so they wont starve :)) and they are enjoying the extra space (finally rolleyes ).

Crystal on the other hand is a little out of sorts :( she is it seems frightened of the ramp and was really unsure about it this morning and wheeking at the others to come back up as she didnt want to be left out. I let her think about it for a while before I didnt want her to miss out on veg time so placed her down the bottom part. She used to talk to me when I held her, she is being very quiet at the moment and stays out of the way most of the time, if flash comes near her she will run off. I am hoping she will come round soon enough and is just worried about his intentions towards her more than minty and fudge who just accepted him as their boy - there is no aggression going on so I think its just that she is a bit unsure.

But I am happy how things have been going as all 4 have been sleeping in the bedroom - in seperate beds, but all near each other so crystal cant hate him completely, infact when I snuck a look she was next to him (in the biggest bed mind). Perhaps she is resenting the big man coming in and taking over as boss pig, but she wasnt really the boss all the time - perhaps she is jealous rolleyes

Flash is a little skittish when I am around, he can set the girls off into hide mode like they used to be so he just has to get used to me and the routine, but he is easier to catch and is quite happy to be held, even manhandled when I examine them all individually for health checks and he lets me stroke him when he is in the hutch.

I have noticed they are all a lot more talkative, but not sure if this is still due to them settling in or due to them being a nice little herd that interact with each other more than they used to. We are out and about all today so they havent had grass time, but I thought it a good time to leave them to bond in the hutch for a day (and make it smell like home), I am probably being daft about that but there will be days they dont get grass time as I am working or the weather is rubbish so it wont hurt to get them used to it, and its not as if they dont have the room (or food)
 
What a lovely little herd! It sounds like Flash has hit it off!

Acceptance with a group usually happens very quickly right at the beginning. They should be now right in the middle of the dominance phase. Girls are a lot more vocal around a boar; often just telling him they are not ready to mate while he rumbles away at them. Prepare yourself for some big drama when it finally happens - the first few seasons with a boar tend to be a bit over the top, but it helps with bonding them much more closely. Things die down somewhat over time, although I can always tell when a girl is in season/coming into season!

Give Crystal time to settle; the example of the others will eventually win out. Some of my new piggies took 3-4 days to master the big ramp (others took about as much as 5 seconds...)
 
Well what a nice surprise when I came back from picking car up from MOT :... Crystal was at the bottom of the ramp :laluot_15:

She looked a lot less hassled too, and she was back to giving fudge a hard time rolleyes so she has had a nice belly full of veg this evening and is going up and down ok (not as well as the others, but she is getting there).

I weighed flash, he is a stonking (compaired to my three) 860g so still not fully grown which I knew but I have a comparison to start with for him. He keeps rumbling around and he tries his hardest bless :)) He really has been the best thing for the group and I am so glad (and relieved) that the ladies behaved so he could make the herd complete.
 
Sounds all good so far!

Don't worry about the ramp, as Wiebke said, some get it fast, others don't. Tulip and Honey were up and down ours all the time, Whiskey took a few days, and we didn't think Noodles would even bother, til one evening we saw her waddling up the ramp after Tulip! And mine's only just about a foot off the ground at the highest point lol.

Dodge and Cherry's first few 'in season' times were crazy, Dodge just went nuts on her, she was covered in boar juice, bleurgh. Now they are much calmer thank goodness, I wasn't too keen on picking her up when she was all wet!
 
I gather that even though he has had his pockets picked (as my friend calls it), he will still think and act like a fully functioning boar.

I worked with goats for many years and the males wee on their own heads :x they do it to entice the females for mating - but insist on rubbing their heads on you too :)>>> I dont think any other domestic male can better that disgusting habit
 
Yuk. That's serously gross. Especially when I think of all the goats I met in petting zoos as a child :{
 
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