Bonding neutered boy with older girls

[Gemmy]

HI

We had a very sad evening last night with the passing of our old lad Sunny. Now his little friend Walter is on his own, we are going to get him neutered and move him in with 2 ladies.

Walty is about 4 months old, so young enough that he should get on quite well with the ladies. the girls will be 3 at Christmas.

I was just wondering if anyone had any advice about how we should go about bonding them? we bonded Sunny and Walter not long ago and it went really well, but I wasn't sure if the rules were the same for mixed gender, and if i am bonding 1 male with 2 females.

Any advice anyone can share would be bril. Walter will be neutered next week and i think he needs to wait 6 weeks before he can go in with the girls, but I'd like to be ready as early as i can.

Thanks! x

 

[Wiebke]

It all depends whether your girls will accept Walter. Not all older sows do when they actually meet, especially dominant girls. But you will see whether acceptance happens pretty straight away.

The best thing you can do is having him living alongside your girls with regular interaction, so they can get used to each other while Walter recovers from his op. Try to feed them side by side etc.

When you introduce them, do so on neutral territory and clean/deodorise the big cage you are moving them into very thoroughly, including bars and furniture. If possible, rearrange everything, so it will be as new to the girls at it will be to Walter.

 

[Gemmy]

Wow. those are some really great ideas. i had never thought of re-arranging stuff, but i think that is a fantastic idea. thank you.

Luckily the girls he is hopfully going to be living with are both really chilled, so i hope they will take to him. but feeding them together is a good idea. he is living in a C&C on his own at the moment, so i might put a barrier down the middle for the first week, so they can smell each other but not be too close.

Now we just have to keep our fingers crossed that they will be friends!

thanks again.

 

[kaz617]

Hiya, I introduced my 2 boys to two sets of girls a few months ago. I too had them living near each other after their ops which helped. After a rocky start and some great advice on here I bathed each group i was wanting to bond. It worked really well and the girls accepted each of them without too much fuss. Bit of a tense few mins at feeding time back in the clean hutches that day but they are all happy as larry now!
Hope it all goes well.

 

[NatalieMT]

I got some great advice here when I bonded Ed (who is about 2) with his lady friend Pickle (who is pushing 7 now). I didn't get Ed neutered myself he was done by the rescue he was with so I only had to quarantine him alone for a couple of weeks.

Initially then went on a few 'dates' on the lawn, somewhere that was neutral for both of them. Ed was quite interested and tried to mount Pickle, she kicked him off a few times but didn't seem overly bothered and munching the grass provided a good distraction. You could try the same trick just with lots of veggies in the cage? They both then moved into a hutch neither of them had previously lived in, it's 6ft by 2ft so plenty of space for them to get away from each other - I was mainly worried about Pickle getting fed up of Ed's advances. Ed doesn't really try to mount Pickle at all now though, he still rumbles quite a lot but no humping!

Like Wiebke said it's very obvious from the beginning whether they will accept each other or not. Prior to living with Ed, Pickle had been living alone for some time because she was very dominant. I'd tried to introduce her to other females and she'd pretty much hated them all, I think she is probably dominant over Ed, he's a little bit shy still but it obviously works that way for them! I agree the first few days are a bit tense but I had no problems whatsoever.

Sending you lots of successful bonding vibes! Hope Walter's operation goes well!