Bonding experts - I'd really appreciate some advice

[Teejay]

Hi all

Firstly, sorry in advance for the essay....I am aware that this post is going to be very long! LOL!

Quick bit of background.....I currently have two pairs of piggies:
- Squeak (castrated boar) and Coco (sow), who are are solidly bonded pair and who get along perfectly pretty much 100% of the time
- Pudding (castrated boar) & Popsy (sow), who are also a solidly bonded pair with no squabbles or fall-outs
- Darklis and Lima, both sows; Darklis used to live with Pudding & Popsy until I noticed some 'ganging up' on her and bullying behaviour towards her, although there was no actual fighting. I made the decision to remove Darklis and bonded her with Lima and they get along really well.

At the moment, the cage arrangement is:
- Squeak & Coco have two levels of a 100cm cage
- Pudding & Popsy have two levels of a 100cm cage
- Darklis and Lima have one level of a 120cm cage

Although the pairs are working very well, this set-up isn't ideal from our human point of view - we like to have the piggies in the lounge with us, and, basically, this cage arrangement means that our lounge is stacked up with cages, which looks untidy (sorry, I'm a bit of a tidy freak rolleyes). Also, I'd really like the piggies to have more 'running space' inside the cage (although they really do run and popcorn around their split level cages!)

So, we've made the decision to bond two of the pairs to make a foursome and then build a C&C mansion.....the newly bonded foursome would have a 6x3 grid cage on the bottom with a hay loft, and the twosome would have a 3x2 grid two-level cage on the top with a tunnel leading to a separate 2x1 grid hay loft.

Logistically, we have some problems we're trying to work out (as the new cage is going where the old cages are), but our main headache is the bonding! We don't want to spend a fortune and loads of time building a new cage if we can't make a peaceful foursome from two of our pairs.

So, with that in mind, we thought we'd try some preliminary bonding this morning.....just to 'test the water' before we go any further with our plans. We set up a c&c pen on the floor (so nice and neutral) and we split it into two....we put Darklis and Lima on one side, and Squeak and Coco on the other so they could touch through the bars of the grids........but talk about fireworks! Squeak seemed to be ok (a bit frisky, but I expected that) but Coco really didn't like Darklis, was teeth chattering and actually lunging at her through the bars, bit her nose a few times, and then started to have a go at poor old Squeaky, who, by now, was minding his own business! Coco seemed ok with Lima, it was Darklis that she really had the problem with.

Anyway, we then moved the pen somewhere else (so no smells) and tried Pudding & Popsy in one side with Lima & Darklis on the other.........lots of teeth chattering and 'fluffing up' of coats, but no actual lunging or biting. Again, this mild aggression seemed to be targeted at Darklis and not Lima.

I did expect that Pudding & Popsy would be the most sensible to bond with Darklis & Lima, as Darklis lived with them before, in a threesome. So i was surprised when Popsy reacted to Darklis like that.

So my question is this.........bearing in mind that the new cage isn't even built yet, and we really need to have bonded two of the pairs before the cage is built (I'd hate to build a huge and expensive cage only to find that none of the pairs would happily live together), what would you do? Would you just assume that, as Pudding, Popsy and Darklis have lived together before (not entirely successfully, but no actual fighting as i said earlier), then they could live harmoniously again. Or would you try to bond Darklis & Lima with Squeak and Coco?

Aaargh....I really don't know what to do for the best. If it wasn't for the fact that we've alreadt spent £75 on bits for the new cage, I'd probably have abandoned the whole idea and just stayed with the current arrangement! LOL!

Any pointers very welcome.

Tracey

 

[Teejay]

Perhaps I should mention that Darklis is a 'special' girl......a little bit 'lights on but no-one at home'.......so it stands to reason that this is the reason none of the others seem to like her (poor mite )

Tracey

 

[Teejay]

*** thinking out loud here.......so please don't pounce and accuse me of being a bad piggie slave......but, thinking outside the box, maybe Pudding could be bonded with Darklis (and they could be the 'twosome' in my C&C mansion plans), then Popsy could be bonded with Lima (who's still only a baby), and eventually Popsy & Lima could be bonded with Squeak and Coco as a foursome.

But (and it's a big but) that would mean splitting up two settled and happy duos, and I'm thinking that's not the right or fair thing to do....:{

x

 

[flips]

Well, I wouldn't give up on your original idea just yet. Have you tried daily swapping of beds, etc to get them used to each others smells. That might be a first step to try.

 

[Teejay]

Hi Flips, thanks for your reply.....my OH and I have been doing some measuring, furniture moving and thinking, and we think we've come up with a good solution.

I think the practical issues of actually building the cage combined with the added pressure of having to bond two of the pairs by the time the cage is built meant we were just making it all too difficult for ourselves.

So, our solution is this. We build a three level, 4x2 grid C&C in our lounge's bay window, with each pair of piggies having a level each. Each level would be about 30cm deep x about 145cm long, so it'll be slightly less space for the two pairs who currently have two levels of a 100cm cage, but they'll have more 'single level running space' which is always better I think.

Then we can take our time with the bonding, if it happens, it happens! xx>>> If we do manage to bond two pairs eventually, we can just adapt the C&C cages we've built and add a ramp between two of the levels, to make a lovely big cage for the group of 4.

I'm breathing a sigh of relief here - can;t think why we didn't think of this before.....it'll mean some moving around in the lounge (especially our humungous telly) but it'll be worth it when the piggies are happy and settled.

Thanks again for the tip on the moving beds around, I'll definitely give that a try if/when we try the bonding, Tracey x