Boars Not Getting Along

[Derpyllama]

Recently i brought home a friend for my boar charlie, after a while we finally decided to introduce the two guinea pigs to each other on neutral territory (aka our bathroom) in order to see how things panned out. I watched them for a few hours and the two did the normal dominance and territorial behavior for a while until I finally felt like they were getting along okay and I set them into the cage. (I made sure to throughly clean the cage and supply double of everything, plenty of food etc. before actually setting the two into the cage)
The next day however they began bickering once more and I had to separate them because they got into a big tussle and my first guinea pig Charlie drew blood from my new Guinea pig Mellow.
They're honestly both so sweet but don't seem to behave well around each other in the cage, during laptime they don't antagonize each other either which seemed weird to me (even if they did it was usually just the occasional annoyance sound occasionally)

Just for reference my first guinea pig had been living alone for a few months until I was able to find what I thought would be a good friend for him
(Older one is around 4/5 months old while the new guinea pig seems to be around 3/4 months old so there's not too much of a gap between them)

Should I separate them for a while then reintroduce them later on? Or should I keep them separated?
Any advice or tips on bonding two boars?

 

[DM030819]

The rule tends to be that once blood is drawn then it's time to separate. But, only you would know if it's worth another try.

How do they act when their cages are next to each other? Do they interact, or don't they seem bothered?

How big is the original cage they were in? With young boars it's common for them to need lots of space so they can be away for each other whenever they want.

 

[Wiebke]

Recently i brought home a friend for my boar charlie, after a while we finally decided to introduce the two guinea pigs to each other on neutral territory (aka our bathroom) in order to see how things panned out. I watched them for a few hours and the two did the normal dominance and territorial behavior for a while until I finally felt like they were getting along okay and I set them into the cage. (I made sure to throughly clean the cage and supply double of everything, plenty of food etc. before actually setting the two into the cage)
The next day however they began bickering once more and I had to separate them because they got into a big tussle and my first guinea pig Charlie drew blood from my new Guinea pig Mellow.
They're honestly both so sweet but don't seem to behave well around each other in the cage, during laptime they don't antagonize each other either which seemed weird to me (even if they did it was usually just the occasional annoyance sound occasionally)

Just for reference my first guinea pig had been living alone for a few months until I was able to find what I thought would be a good friend for him
(Older one is around 4/5 months old while the new guinea pig seems to be around 3/4 months old so there's not too much of a gap between them)

Should I separate them for a while then reintroduce them later on? Or should I keep them separated?
Any advice or tips on bonding two boars?

When your boys drew blood, was it a misjudged scratch or a deep intentional bite? You can work past the first, but usually not past the second.

Please take your time to read these two guides. Give them plenty of time in the neutral bonding area - if necessary even overnight until you are sure that they get along and have sorted out the worst of the dominance. Follow the tips re. houses and re-doing the cage. It doesn't sound like it has been a serious fight, or there would be lots of teeth chattering and tense body language afterwards etc.
PS: I would not do a buddy bath. If necessary, wipe them both with the same rag, so their scents mingle and switch them in their cages beforehand a couple of times, so they are used to each other's scent and presence in their territory.
Illustrated Bonding / Dominance Behaviours And Dynamics
Boars: Bullying, Fighting, Fall-outs And What Next?

 

[Pomelo]

Hey. So I have seen and am in the exact same place as you! It's the day after I picked up my new pig, Pomelo. And my first, Spiffy, has been tussling with him the first few times. The only place I had as a neutral territory was the bathtub and I couldn't leave them there overnight... Not sure what to do now. Spiffy's been super dominant.... D:

 

[Wiebke]

Hey. So I have seen and am in the exact same place as you! It's the day after I picked up my new pig, Pomelo. And my first, Spiffy, has been tussling with him the first few times. The only place I had as a neutral territory was the bathtub and I couldn't leave them there overnight... Not sure what to do now. Spiffy's been super dominant.... D:

If you have split them up again, wait until the weekend when you have a full day and Pomelo has settled in more. Give new guinea pigs time to get to know each other through a divider so they are less inclined to overreact.

There is of course always the risk that the two boars do not get on when the chips are down. That is the risk you have to take when doing your boar intro yourself and are don't have access to a good standard rescue that offer boar dating at the rescue. Whatever you do, a boar bond always comes down whether they two boys get on and can solve the dominance question.

 

[Guanchy]

This is my experience, I'm not an expert as I'm new at keeping Guinea pigs as well, ive had mines for about 6 months and i had a boy first, then brought home another boy to keep him company. They got along well until one day they decided to try to kill each other!

i had them separate for a few weeks and now i was able to keep them together in the same cage, and its been almost 3 weeks and they have gotten along great.

I put them together in the bathroom like you did, plenty of veggies, two water battles etc.. please dont use hideys while introducing them because one can go inside the hidey and not be able to come out and get attacked by the other one.

After being there for a few hours i put them in the cage. I cleaned everything out first, move everything around etc... i put them in the cage with a grid divider and they were able to look at each other and smell each other, touch each other's noses etc..but they couldnt fight through the grid, although they tried lol but they couldnt get to each other.

I left them like that for about a week, then took the grid out and booom! they have been together with no problem every since.

Again this is what worked for me, hopefully it works for you as well if you give it a try.

What size is your cage? size also plays a big factor when it comes to keeping two boars together.

 

[Pomelo]

If you have split them up again, wait until the weekend when you have a full day and Pomelo has settled in more. Give new guinea pigs time to get to know each other through a divider so they are less inclined to overreact.

There is of course always the risk that the two boars do not get on when the chips are down. That is the risk you have to take when doing your boar intro yourself and are don't have access to a good standard rescue that offer boar dating at the rescue. Whatever you do, a boar bond always comes down whether they two boys get on and can solve the dominance question.

Ok. If they have fought in the past, does that mean that the bond simply won't work no matter what efforts they make in the future?

 

[Reenie]

I think it depends on the fight. Two of mine had a scuffle a couple of months back, and Chicco came away with a scratch on his nose and boss pig bragging rights. I wasn't there at the time to witness it, although they had been winding each other up, so I knew what had happened. Since then they've been fine (Chicco does boss Groucho around a bit, but they still eat together quite happily most of the time). Groucho does get tossed out his choice of sleeping place quite often, but he just goes and finds another.

 

[Wiebke]

Ok. If they have fought in the past, does that mean that the bond simply won't work no matter what efforts they make in the future?

It depends on how serious the fight was. If there were deep intentional full on bites, then you can forget about them ever getting on. If it was just a tussle, even one with an accidental scratch, you are usually still in with a chance. However, even boars that do not fight may not match personality-wise once the chips are down.

Rescues that boar date (i.e have the boars decided whether they want to live together) have made the experience that it takes on average about 1-3 candidates to find "Mr Right" irrespective of the age. Teenage boars can take even more attempts to find a match.

When bonding piggies at home (whether that is boars, sows or mixed genders or trying to introduce new piggies into a group), it is vital to have a plan B at the ready in case the bonding is not coming off as you miss a key element - that of choice by the piggies. Piggies need company of their kind but they are every bit as difficult to match as humans...

All you can do is try and hope for the best. You cannot be told to be automatically best friends with a new flat mate you have never met, an neither can piggies. It is always great when it works out, but there is no guarantee that it will.

 

[Derpyllama]

When your boys drew blood, was it a misjudged scratch or a deep intentional bite? You can work past the first, but usually not past the second.

Please take your time to read these two guides. Give them plenty of time in the neutral bonding area - if necessary even overnight until you are sure that they get along and have sorted out the worst of the dominance. Follow the tips re. houses and re-doing the cage. It doesn't sound like it has been a serious fight, or there would be lots of teeth chattering and tense body language afterwards etc.
PS: I would not do a buddy bath. If necessary, wipe them both with the same rag, so their scents mingle and switch them in their cages beforehand a couple of times, so they are used to each other's scent and presence in their territory.
Illustrated Bonding / Dominance Behaviours And Dynamics
Boars: Bullying, Fighting, Fall-outs And What Next?

Thanks for linking the guides to me, I'll make sure to throughly check them out before I start doing anything with my boys. I think it might've been an unintentional wound that my older boar Charlie inflicted on the smaller boar mellow during their scuffle, the smaller one ended up with a scratch on his lip which has been healing pretty well since then. That was the only real time they got into a full on scuffle involving blood, otherwise the two seemed to tolerate each other to an extent.

 

[Derpyllama]

The rule tends to be that once blood is drawn then it's time to separate. But, only you would know if it's worth another try.

How do they act when their cages are next to each other? Do they interact, or don't they seem bothered?

How big is the original cage they were in? With young boars it's common for them to need lots of space so they can be away for each other whenever they want.

The original cage I have for them is roughly around a 2x4 but we are looking to expand now knowing that two boars need some more space. When I set the divider up between them they were trying to interact with each other, there was some occasional low sounding rumbles and bottom wiggling from my older boar Charlie and some occasional soft chattering happening every now and then but nothing too intense. Outside the cage the two manage to tolerate each other to an extent for lap time and when eating with only some occasional rumbles from Charlie. Whenever one guinea pig leaves the cage the other one starts to wheek for a moment as well if that's anything to note of.