Hello.
I hope you will not mind a new member replying on this thread.
About five years ago we got our first piggies, a pair of brothers. Nobody said anything to us about neutering and, as we did not intend keeping any females, we never gave it another thought. The brothers lived together very happily for four years until, sadly, one brother died.
We decided we would like to get a new companion for the surviving brother. We felt that another adult boar would be best, since that way any problems would be apparent during the early weeks when we were alert to the likelihood of conflict, rather than if we got a baby and they appeared to settle well, only for trouble to arise as the youngster grew up.
I was keen to get a rescue boar, and had all these wonderful ideas about offering a loving home to a deserving but lonely boar. I started to ring round our local rescues...but again and again the response was the same: Was Sammy neutered? As soon as I admitted he wasn't, they just didn't want to know. In vain I tried to explain that we would not be putting the two boars in together immediately - they would be introduced only very slowly if at all. It made no difference. Neutered boars were re-homed to live with sows, sows were re-homed to live with neutered boars. End of. One rescue even added insult to injury by offering me a rabbit as a companion instead.
I began to despair of ever finding a new friend for Sammy and for a while it seemed the only options were: to have him neutered at over 4 years old, to try to get a pig from a non-rescue source, or to keep him as a single boar and give him lots of fuss ourselves.
Well, fortunately for Sammy, this story does have a happy ending. We found, via the internet, a rescue which did not apply the '100% neutering' rule, who were able to offer us a young adult boar. Better still, after slow and careful introduction following the procedures set out on the 'barmy4boars' and cavyspirit websites, Sammy and Rupert (hence my username!) became such good friends that they are able to live together full-time. But if all rescues had stuck to a full neutering policy, that happy ending would not have happened.
So, for those of you who do/would routinely neuter all boars, how would you react if somebody approached you, as I did, wanting to offer a loving home with a recently bereaved full boar?
It does seem that full boars are a bit of a 'niche market' with comparatively few people looking to adopt one, and perhaps the answer is for regional and internet-based networks to be set-up so that potential adopters can be put in contact with those rescues which, for whatever reason, do have boars for re-homing. This would, of course, create problems with home checks (we were not checked, although we would have accepted a check if required) and also means long stressful car journeys for the boars concerned. But perhaps it is the most practical solution?