Thank you everyone for your advice! I’m very new to boars and the research from google was like YES DO IT, so that’s why I thought I’d come to my pig friends here.
It looks like if I do end up getting more pigs in the future, females would need to go downstairs in the living room.
How do boars react with another set of board in a different cage but in the same room? Will that also upset the dynamics?
Hi
No, boars can live next to boars without problems.
You may initially/occasionally see some territorial dominance behaviour through the bars but that goes for any group (even a group of one or two) and is not gender specific.
The big issue is the sow pheromones.
When you start with boars living in a sow pheromone-free environment, then they will react much more strongly to them on exposure (and so will sows coming into contact with boar pheromones, only that in them it won't lead to potential fights or fall-outs because sows are wired to live with other sows in a group). With two boars in a group, it comes down to mating rights.
If you have a boars-only environment, it is best to continue with that (and helping with dealing with the masses of unwanted boars looking for a new a home if you can) or if you want to switch over to a mixed environment, then it is best by splitting your neutered boys and having them live with a sow each and then build up a mixed gender group with one boar once one of them has died. As long as you have two sows who are friends, a 'husboar' (i.e. neutered boar) living with two sows is a very stable trio; the same also works for a full boar living with two well bonded de-sexed/spayed sows. A quartet consisting of 1 husboar and three sows also do well; two sows and two boars generally have a latent instability built in and fail much more often than they succeed.
Boars that have grown up in a room with or that have lived for a goodly while around sow pheromones produce a calming compound and are much less likely to fight and over-react. I have had the odd pair of boars living right next to and above sows/one neutered 'husboar' mixed gender groups without issues although there have been the occasional moments, especially when strong seasons have coincided with teenage hormones in by boar pairs (neutering not withstanding) but these boars have all had the necessary exposure or background before I introduced them, usually because the older boar had difficulty being accepted by any of my sows at the time.
For more neutered boars in the same group of sows, you need LOTS of space and ideally a larger number of piggies. It works for boars living in a larger bachelor boar group or in a larger mixed gender group environment but it doesn't work out in your classic cage environment with only very few piggies because trio and then small group dynamics (about 4-6 piggies) differ majorly from large group/herd dynamics. In a small setting you are basically working against and not with social cavy wiring.
Member experiments and experiences over the years have been overwhelmingly on the negative side for your type of plan.
I hope that this helps you make more sense of the conflicting information that is around?
