danuutka
Junior Guinea Pig
After an unexpected death of one of our boars, his cage mate was left alone and clearly pining. Yesterday, we adopted a little boy from Cavy Corner to attempt to bond with our existing boy, Edgar (he is 2.5 years old).
Edgar was always the dominant boar in his pairing, but was quite quietly dominant - he knew his place, so never really felt much need to be overly dominating, he’d just put his underboar in his place if he started acting up.
We followed all of the bonding instructions provided - we bonded them in a neutral, large enclosure and things seemed to be going well. They did have some periods of lunging, loud chattering etc, but they also slept next to each other and had some pretty normal encounters (rumble strutting, bum sniffing etc).
After about 5 hours of this, we tried to put them in their “forever home” - however all hell broke loose. Within moments of being in the cage, the boys were chasing each other, flying through the cage, fluffing up, lunging at each other and doing the most awful chattering. We immediately brought them back into the bonding pen, and they seemed to calm down a bit.
For most of the night, they’ve been having pretty nasty chattering (not the mild one, the really aggressive one), yawning, lunging at each other and standing on their back legs. However, no blood has been drawn.
So what do we do? They have two of everything, a big bonding pen and an even bigger cage, plenty of hay, no hideys with only one entrance, and snacks to distract them. I’ve had a look at the videos provided on the Bonding Guides on here, but none of them really depict what Edgar and Teddy are doing at the moment. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, because this is so stressful!
Edgar was always the dominant boar in his pairing, but was quite quietly dominant - he knew his place, so never really felt much need to be overly dominating, he’d just put his underboar in his place if he started acting up.
We followed all of the bonding instructions provided - we bonded them in a neutral, large enclosure and things seemed to be going well. They did have some periods of lunging, loud chattering etc, but they also slept next to each other and had some pretty normal encounters (rumble strutting, bum sniffing etc).
After about 5 hours of this, we tried to put them in their “forever home” - however all hell broke loose. Within moments of being in the cage, the boys were chasing each other, flying through the cage, fluffing up, lunging at each other and doing the most awful chattering. We immediately brought them back into the bonding pen, and they seemed to calm down a bit.
For most of the night, they’ve been having pretty nasty chattering (not the mild one, the really aggressive one), yawning, lunging at each other and standing on their back legs. However, no blood has been drawn.
So what do we do? They have two of everything, a big bonding pen and an even bigger cage, plenty of hay, no hideys with only one entrance, and snacks to distract them. I’ve had a look at the videos provided on the Bonding Guides on here, but none of them really depict what Edgar and Teddy are doing at the moment. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, because this is so stressful!
