Welcome to the forum
Chasing and rumbling isn’t fighting. It’s normal dominance and something they will always do to maintain their bond.
A fight is unmistakeable, rolling around and causing injuries to each other - if that occurs then it means they don’t like each other and must be permanently separated.
How long were they in the neutral territory originally? You want several hours depending on how things go but 12 hours or even overnight is fine. Moving to a new territory causes a new round of dominance so they need to be neutral for a long enough time to get into the second stage of bonding before being moved.
When you move them to the cage, ensure it does not contain the scent of only one pig - it either has to be totally neutral or contain the scent of both pigs (I personally prefer totally neutral).
You then need to leave them to go through the dominance phases once in the cage. Fully setting up their relationship takes two weeks.
If they do have an actual fight in that time, then they need to be separated and will need to live side by side with bars between them permanently.
I’ve added our bonding guide as well as our dominance behaviours guide. Both guides explain positive and negative interactions, as well as showing the scale of dominance behaviours
Ps - I have moved your thread to the bonding section of the forum so that you can receive ongoing advice if needed. We monitor the care sections and receive notifications when posts are made.
I have also removed your postcode from your profile for your own online safety. Your postcode provides information detailing the specific road you live on so isn’t safe to provide.
1 Introduction
2 Pre-bonding
- Quarantine and sexing
- The need for a plan B
- The rule-breaker: Youngsters under 4 months (sub-teenage)
3 Setting up an introduction
- Getting to know each other
- ‘Buddy baths’ – why not
- Scent swapping - why not
- Setting up a neutral bonding area
- How to start the bonding
4 Acceptance phase: Do we like...
1 List of dominance behaviours in ascending order of aggression
2 What may cause this type of behaviour in boars?
3 When do you see these behaviours in sows?
4 What can trigger fall-outs?
5 Further helpful guide links
I thought it may be handy to have a sticky on typical dominance behaviours for a reference - hopefully it may help humans understand guinea pigs and their behaviour a bit more and hopefully prevent some avoidable problems!
1 List of dominance behaviours...
