2 females fighting?

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Alvarra

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Hi!
So I'm pretty much shocked at what happened between my 2 females. We've been bonding our girls with our boar (it's been like 3 weeks now). The initial meeting went very good, the guinea pigs seemed to like each other immediately. They were relaxing together and stuff. We moved then to the cage and the grey one seemed to be chasing off from the house the white one by nipping her backside. The white one would run away and that would be it. I've resd about bonding and it said that its the dominance thing and will take a while to settle. So just minutes ago I heard very loud week and saw this on camera. I immediately went over to check them for any wounds but there was none. At the moment they're separated but I'm at loss what to do. Please, any advice will be appreciated
🙏

If it matters: the grey one is 2 months old, the white one is 4.5ish.
Also I'm sorry for any grammar mistakes, English is not my native language.

 
I'm so sorry.

Unfortunately we do sometimes see adding another piggy really upsetting the bond between the original two.

You’ve done right by separating them. I would leave them apart for a few days to calm down. You could then try to reintroduce them on neutral territory in a few days time and see if they go back together.
Unfortunately you may need to prepare that they won’t go back as a trio and that you end up with the boar with one of the sows in one cage and the other sow single in a separate cage.
 
Piggies&buns said:
you end up with the boar with one of the sows in one cage and the other sow single in a separate cage.
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Are you sure that's allowed in Switzerland? It's against the law to keep guinea pigs alone in Switzerland and I'm not sure that beside each other in cages counts as living together, according to Swiss law. I've never heard of it in Germany for instance. The Rescues say that they will always find some guinea constellation that will work, even if you have to give up one of your own guineas and take another guinea from the Rescue on.

Let's hope for @Alvarra 's sake that the bond works when she tries again in a few days.
 
It would have to be like that even as a temporary solution in any event. If the two can’t stay in the same cage and a new arrangement can’t be made that exact same day. I don’t profess to know about how quickly alternative arrangements could be made - in the UK rescue arrangements can take weeks
 
Piggies&buns said:
It would have to be like that even as a temporary solution in any event. If the two can’t stay in the same cage and a new arrangement can’t be made that exact same day.
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Yes, of course. I'm sure there's some amount of time written into the law, also to give the owner time to find a suitable new partner piggy for a bereaved piggy.

My point is: what can be done in the UK as a medium- to long-term solution might be illegal in Switzerland and OP needs to do their own research on it.

btw it's the same for pet rabbits in Switzerland, it really is a law brought in to protect pets!
 
Hi guys, a little update.
So Lana (the grey one) is separated now, as she seems to be causing the problems. She wasn't a new addition to the herd, basically we got her and Lily (white one) on the same day, so the bonding between them and the boy went at the same day, she wasn't added to existing group of 2. What shocked me was that for around 3 weeks they all were okay, except for Lana bullying Lily out of the houses - she'd like..nip? her butt and Lily would just run away. I've read about it in one of the threads here that it's a dominance thing and to have the houses with 2 entries which I did, except for that 1 little corner house. On the vid she again tried to nip and Lily seemed to be fed up with that behavior. I posted the video also on a facebook group and I was told that it could be some hormonal argues between them since they've reached the teenage age: Lana is 3months and Lily 5months.
It's funny story because we got these to for William (the chunky boy in the video that stepped in) because my other 2 girls hated him and one actually attacked him to draw blood, we had to go to the vet and I also ended up with teeth mark on my forearm.
So anyway, the situation now is that Lana is still in the same cage with them, I seperated her with cc bars, she have all she needs. What I also did was I took away all the hideys and just kept some tunnels and made 1 hiding spot in the same corner for both of the piggies, so when they're hiding there, they're right next to eachother. Before that I've tried letting them roam together without any hideys or tunnels, and Lana was still occasionally bullying Lily by biting her butt.

The whole fight looked a bit weird to me because they looked like 2 roosters squaring up without actually biting eachother. The other time when William fought with my older female it looked compeletely different, where she lunged at him and ripped out his fur and such. Here after that fight there was nothing, also no wounds. But maybe I'm just delusional at this point lol. I'm not going to do any bonding today as in case anything happens the vets are closed. So they're just gonna stay like that for a day or 2 and I will attempt to re-bond them again.

I don't want to give up on them so I will do everything in my power to make them work before making any other decisions. I also don't plan on keeping her separated through bars like that forever as it just makes me sad seeing her technically alone.
 
Have I understood correctly that you bonded all three of them on the same day and the girls didn't know each other previously?
Girls ... really, they can be a nightmare sometimes.
Looks like they don't like each other, on the other hand they have been together for three weeks.

I would give the bonding another try once they have all had time to calm down. Lana could be more easy going once she had to spend some time on her own.

I would start the re-bonding on neutral ground again and if it works out, just put fleece tunnels and others tunnel into the cage for the first weeks. No houses at all.

Do you have a second group as well?
If so, you could try to bond the younger girl with the other group, if this bonding doesn't work out.
Or get a baby girl (2 months) as an addition to this group. I have been successful with this tactic in the past but my girls were much older than yours. Lana is probably a bit like my Kylie, a real pain in the a... sometimes
 
Yes, all three were bonded together on the same day, the girls didn't know each other.
The initial bonding though went great, William did the dominance humping on both of them, but then he was very interested in Lana / I think it was more of the sexual hump, than dominance, and she was letting him / I'm not sure though if it matters.
There was no chasing, no teeth chattering, they were all nice together to which I had a sigh of relief because of the failed bonding previously with other group.
They would eat together and chill without any issues. After that I put the houses in and few days later Lana started chasing off Lily ; she'd run away, not even fight back. So I thought ok, it's the dominance thing, they will calm down.
Their behavior really confuses me haha. Maybe Lily got fed up with her behavior, maybe it's jealousy over a boar? Is that even a thing? I noticed that Lily sits most of the time with William, like snuggling to him etc, maybe Lana is jealous?
I'm really hoping that Lana calms down a bit after being separated. And I will do as you suggested, I will give them maybe a week, clean the mats and do fresh bonding again. I've read that in some special situations I could do something called buddy bath? But I'm not sure since the link from forum says it would be rather used on boars.

And yes, I do have a second group with 2 females Luna (almost 5 years old) and Lumi (4 yrs). Unfortunately Luna was very aggressive towards William so the thought of bonding her with any guinea pig reminds me of the trauma she gave us lol. And I don't mean just the typical teeth chattering, she'd yawn at him showing off her teeth, huffing and eventually attacking. And even after separating them with a towel, she walked around it to go at him again. Not to mention that the b* bit me aswell haha. But maybe she'd behave differently towards a babygirl. I think I'd rather re-bond them and hope for the best, maybe it's just the hormonal thing and I need to wait it out. Good thing is that William seems to also have a role of negotiatior here, he steps in when things seem to be too heated.
 
In a trio it does happen that one sow will be closer to the boar than the other sow and that can cause issues. Ultimately a boar will side with one sow over the other.
Trios in general can be very tricky to get to work - working in even numbers can be better.

Buddy baths are not recommended, even for boars. They can introduce a level of stress which can be detrimental to the bonding process (which is already stressful enough on its own).
 
Ohhh see I didn't know that trio is tricky like that. Would it be better then to get one more female to have a group as 4?
But then again, Lana still would have to accept Lily and stop bullying her so we're back to the re-bonding point.
We had a group of 4 before, unfortunately 2 passed. First was girl, but she had hyperthyroidism and passed away after a year of diagnosis, and 3months after her our boar passed so now it's 2 females that rejected Wiliam.
Also no buddy bath then.
 
Alvarra said:
Ohhh see I didn't know that trio is tricky like that. Would it be better then to get one more female to have a group as 4?
But then again, Lana still would have to accept Lily and stop bullying her so we're back to the re-bonding point.
We had a group of 4 before, unfortunately 2 passed. First was girl, but she had hyperthyroidism and passed away after a year of diagnosis, and 3months after her our boar passed so now it's 2 females that rejected Wiliam.
Also no buddy bath then.
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If Lana and Lily do not have compatibility and don’t like each other then there is nothing you can do - adding more piggies with them will not resolve any issues between them, in fact it will just make things worse.
If they really don’t like each other then they quite simply cannot remain in the same cage at all.
 
Alvarra said:
that it could be some hormonal argues between them since they've reached the teenage age: Lana is 3months and Lily 5months.
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Their fight looked pretty wild to me for a teenage argue tbh.

I mostly had trios and didn't have sudden, long-running problems. My local rescue in southwest Germany says it's about getting the right personalities together, which is a good reason to adopt from a Rescue because they know their piggy personalities. I suppose partly because it doesn't seem usual in Germany to separate piggies in a failed bond and keep them side by side in cc cages, there's a different way of dealing with failed bonds and this is: to get the correct personalities together. I wouldn't bother mentioning this here on the forum if you, Alvarra, were in the US or the UK, but as you are in my neighbouring country, I want to pass on some of the acquired knowledge/experience from here, from good, reliable rescues.

One is: some boars wear the trousers and are good at dealing with bit*** sows ("Zicken") and some are very sweet, gentle boars, who aren't too good with "Zicken". I'm wondering if William is in the second group, especially since he's been rejected before, and also because it took him a little while to try and split up the fight and he didn't manage right away. If that is the case, I'd suggest giving up on Lana and trying to find a sow who loves a sweet, gentle boar.

I would definitely not try for a foursome at the moment, in my experience that won't help the problem between Lana and Lily.
 
Mrs Tiggy Winkle said:
If that is the case, I'd suggest giving up on Lana
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I did read that that is precisely what you do NOT want to do, but otoh you may not want to have to establish a third group? I did briefly when a strong, macho, 'trousers on' boar of mine passed and one of his sows, who was less cuddly with him, seemingly less attached, went haywire. I wrote about her on this thread, posts 27 and 28 if you're interested: My guineas

'Giving up' meaning of course 'find other suitable, piggy-knowledgeable and piggy-friendly family'.
 
Oh yeah William is very sweet and gentle boy. I'm just glad this fight didn't end up in bloodshed.
Lana was chosen by my husband and it's also been a while since we got her, so we pretty much got attached to her hence why I wouldn't want to give her up. And of course like piggies&buns said, if they don't resolve their problems and the re-bonding fails we will have to eventually think about finding her a different family.
I also thought on trying to introducing her to our 2 older sows, but since one of them have a history with aggression towards William, I'm rather sceptical (or traumatised).
The cc cage now is temporary as my husband is planning on building the cage for them (he already built one for the other group). Then technically we could have 3rd group, but I'm not sure if my hubby would be happy about it haha.
I'm just shocked at the sudden change of behavior as post bonding they were okay, chilling next to eachother, then Lana started chasing Lily out of the houses, and all of the sudden this happens. Honestly I'd love it to be the matter of being possesive over the houses or something, than like you mentioned, personality incompatibility.
As of now Lana is separated, she's in the hiding spot where I kind of wanted her to be: close to the bars in a corner, and on the other side of bars there's the other 2 so they're still next to each other. She also have a tunnel if she wants to hide in that.
I also have the camera pointing at them 24/7 and I pretty much stalk them.
 
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