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Some advice!

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kel22

I posted on the behaviour board a while about about our two boars who are just over a year. Not sure if this post should be there or here really!

They are brothers and until recently, were fine together. However, the bigger one of the two has been bullying the other one and there was an incident with a scratched ear. Things seemed to have calmed down a bit recently. I kept them together and they were still sharing the same food bowl, etc, etc without a problem.

We had them both neutered last Tuesday in the hope that it would help any aggression. The vets advised keeping them on just newspaper, no woodshavings or hay, for a week which has been fine. However, yesterday morning I noticed that the littler one had what looked like scrapes on his back and his fur is missing. I assumed that he'd caught his back on something in the run. Then in the afternoon, I noticed that the other one has got exactly the same thing. Their fur is missing and looks really sore. I can't work out if these are fight injuries or whether they've both got some sort of skin irritations. They've both been on antibiotics in the last week. The littler one before his op as he managed to rip off his nail somehow and the bigger one since his op as he bled a bit more during surgery. Could they have had an adverse reaction to the drugs? Or is it more likely that they've been fighting? I haven't seen anything going on!

Any advice appreciated.

Kelly
 
Hi Kelly,

Neutering will do nothing to help agression between boars, so it is very possible that they are still fighting. However, there could be a skin irritation there, you would need to examine the area closely for any signs of scurf/dandruff/dry skin, scabs, lacerations etc. which could all indicate a parasitic or fungal problem. Once you have identified whether the problem is due to a skin complaint or due to a surface injury, then you can consider how to treat it.
 
Thanks for your message. They have a two storey hutch and there's been a lot of chattering and squaring up to eachother today so I've decided to put one upstairs and one downstairs with separate food, water, bed, etc. I'm pretty sure the skin thing is down to fighting having seen them today. I haven't put them out on the grass due to them still having their stitches.

Didn't realise having guineas could be so stressful!

K.
 
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