Bonding Questions

PiggyPoppa

PiggyPoppa

New Born Pup
Joined
May 21, 2023
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We let our Piggies meet finally and just had a few questions. They were in the playpen for about an hour unfortunately we had to cut the bonding short so we are gonna try again tonight. Our older male was making most the noise, he did some rumple strutting as well as a lot of squeaking. He also was touching our girl’s backside a bunch and a few times he was sniffing her ear, maybe biting idk, while she ran away most of the time. He’s older and bigger so I assume he’ll be the dominant one in the hierarchy just wanted to make sure all this is normal for bonding? Also how do you know when they have bonded? They seemed pretty chill most of the time, we had veggies and treats to give them, just a few instances where they came face to face and lunged at each other. I just wanna be sure the bonding has worked before I put our girl in his cage. Any help is appreciated thanks
 
As long as their interaction is not too aggressive, the bonding is going well. If blood is drawn then they do not accept each other and should be separated. Dominance behaviors like rumble strutting are normal until they sort out who's who. When they are fully bonded, they should be coexisting pretty well.
Hope this is helpful.
 
You need to put them on neutral territory, leave them for a few hours and then move them to their new cage together.
Unfortunately as you separated them you have interrupted the process and will now need to start all over again. Please don’t separate piggies once you have started the process and it is going well - they need to be able to get through the early stages.

It takes two weeks of permanently being together for them to fully settled their relationship and hierarchy.

The guides below explain the bonding process and the behaviours you want to see.

Do more that lunging is defensive not aggressive.

Bonding and Interaction: Illustrated social behaviours and bonding dynamics
A - Z of Guinea Pig Behaviours
Boars: Teenage, Bullying, Fighting, Fall-outs And What Next?
 
Ok thanks for the advice everyone. We will give them a long session together tonight. There hasn’t been too much aggressive behavior from either, mostly our Boy touching or sniffing our Girl’s butt and her running away. We put the cages next to each other today and our Boy has been squeaking a lot. Don’t know if that means he misses her or he’s mad she’s close by ugh. Very confused but thanks all for the advice
 
PiggyPoppa said:
Ok thanks for the advice everyone. We will give them a long session together tonight. There hasn’t been too much aggressive behavior from either, mostly our Boy touching or sniffing our Girl’s butt and her running away. We put the cages next to each other today and our Boy has been squeaking a lot. Don’t know if that means he misses her or he’s mad she’s close by ugh. Very confused but thanks all for the advice
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It all sounds very normal and that they didn’t need to be separated.
Put them together and don’t separate them again unless the bonding actually fails with a fight (which isn’t likely in an opposite sex pair)
 
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