Rescue guinea introduction - nursing sow

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Coriroc

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Hello all,

My boyfriend and I are keen to add another guinea to our sow/neutered boar couple, and have our eyes on a sow from a rescue centre. Her name is Gwen, to save typing it all out over and over. We had a home visit etc and we took our two up to meet Gwen for a mix last weekend. It initially went swimmingly, the two girls got along fabulously. However, Gwen then became angry with and attacked our boar after a lot of dominance displays from the two. This didn't go too well for her, as he is rather larger than her, so we separated them at this point and have arranged to return next week to try again.

I was hoping I could get some advice here: I think a potential complicating factor could be that Gwen recently had babies (ie, she came to rescue centre pregnant and gave birth there). She was still nursing during the mix (though her little ones weren't there) and I wonder whether that could influence her into attacking a strange boar, while tolerating a new female?

Any advice would be appreciated! Nobody at the rescue centre seemed too sure. Many thanks!
 
Sorry, i dont really have any advice, just some criticism (towards the rescue, not you) I may be wrong here, and there are plenty of rescues here who will back me up or correct me, but i am sure no reputable rescue would even try any form of bonding while a mother is still nursing babies......? I would imagine Gwen was on the defensive side towards your boar as he would probably have been trying it on.

If you could give is your location we may be able to recommend a piggy bank approved rescue to you.

x
 
I was a little surprised they were willing so early on (they would have done it the week prior too). I'm in Bath, if you've anywhere to recommend nearby.
 
Toffeewoffee said:
Sorry, i dont really have any advice, just some criticism (towards the rescue, not you) I may be wrong here, and there are plenty of rescues here who will back me up or correct me, but i am sure no reputable rescue would even try any form of bonding while a mother is still nursing babies......? I would imagine Gwen was on the defensive side towards your boar as he would probably have been trying it on.

If you could give is your location we may be able to recommend a piggy bank approved rescue to you.x
Click to expand...

I'm also very surprised that a rescue is in that much of a hurry to get an animal out of their doors that they haven't even given the poor girl time to finish feeding her babies and get over the pregnacy and birth.

I'm not surprised that things didn't go well :(

Can you not just put a deposit on her until she's had time to get over everything.
 
I imagine that the fact she was nursing (or still rather hormonal) would have had an affect on how she accepted the advances of a boar. I foster pregnant sows and i do find that during the end of pregnancy until the babies are weaned they can be very tetchy, and quick to be snippy if another pig invaded their space. In fact one of my foster pigs ended up living alone for a few weeks after weaning her babies as she was so temperamental ... she's happily living with 5 other sows now though.
 
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