Bonding sows

[Puzzlepigs]

Hi everyone

Recently I rescued a beautiful jet black swiss sow from a local guinea pig rescue - (she was one of the 285/300 rescued earlier this year) though she was extremely aggressive towards my two and was biting, kicking, teeth chattering etc. Unfortunately I had to give her back (it was my decision) because I wanted the best for all of them. Note - she did get on with the other pigs at the rescue, but for some reason she took a disliking to my two!

The woman at the rescue says she has plenty more options so this morning I reserved two girls to join my two - and fingers crossed if everything goes well I will have a mini herd/group
Does anybody have any advice for bonding them all as I really want to avoid having to return them?
The ones I am rescuing are 8-10months old and my two - Bingo is 5 years and Puzzle will be coming up for 2 this summer. All of the piggies are very friendly, Bingo in particular - she's such a laid back pig. Puzzle is the more dominant one and does rumble round the cage a bit, but she has never been aggressive towards Bingo.

I'm leaving it about a week before I divide the cage for the first 'introduction' to give my two a bit of time to recover from the previous events. Would you just go for it and put them all in together or separate them first but keep them side by side with a dividing grid? I've also got the option of putting them on the grass (providing the weather is good) although it would be a little harder to get to them all if there was a fight.

Any suggestions would be great - I just want to do the best for the pigs

 

[Caviesgalore (EPGPR)]

I've just bonded my two groups of girls, a trio and a pair. They had seen each other from time to time during floor time, one group would be out whilst the other remaind in their cage, but they were able to sniff noses etc. through the bars.

I made up a C&C run and divided it down the centre and popped a group in each side. They stayed like this for several days, chatting to each other through the bars and we also had a bit of rumbling etc. On about day 3 I popped each group into a separate carrier, cleaned out the pen, put down fresh newspaper, lots of hay, scattered pellet food around and added some cut grass I then popped all 5 piggies in and sat back and watched. Make sure you have a cuppa and some towels and a dustpan handy the latter two come in useful should you need to intervene with any squabbles!

I have to say it was quite a tense process at times as one of my girls turned out to be incredibly stroppy! You need to make sure you have plenty of time set aside to watch what is going on. If things got particularly stressy I would add more food or hay just to interrupt things. For the first two nights I replaced the divider just to give the girls a bit of a break, however on day 3 I removed it for the last time and fingers crossed all has been well since. Whilst bonding I wouldn't add any pigloos or houses and when you do start to add hidy places make sure there are two exit points so no piggy gets cornered. I also did away with food bowls for the first couple of days and just scattered food around.

The girls have now moved into their new home - which is actually my trios old 150 cage (thoroughly scrubbed and disinfected) with added C&C grids to make it 5x2 with upper hay level and all seems ok.

Good luck, bonding is fascinating I hope it all works out this time for your girls.

 

[Puzzlepigs]

I'd taken out hidys last time when trying to introduce the last piggy so I'm glad I did something right there! She was such a sweet natured piggy once out on her own - she just didn't get on with my two. Hence why I didn't introduce her on here, because I didn't want a thread up if it ended up that she had to go back. She also didn't have a name because I knew I'd get attached to her if I gave her a name before making sure that she'd get on!
She was 'Pig' for the time I had her

I'll be dividing the C&C at night and I hope to introduce them in a pen in the daytime, first with a divider and then after a few days all in together. When I introduced (tried to introduce) 'Pig' to my two I had a piece of correx at the ready but when 'Pig' went for Puzzle I seemed to have misplaced the correx and the only thing I had next to me was a baking tray... mallethead

Thanks

 

[Wiebke]

Piggies feeling out of their depth can go on overload, and then it takes only one wrong signal for things to blow up very quickly. Introducing a third piggy to a bonded pair is often a very tricky constellation.

Some intros here have taken up to two weeks until the newbies had settled down enough - and even then, the intros on neutral ground took more than one day under constant supervision with nights in their separate cages.

Intros are often not as smooth as you would like. Best of luck with your next lot! Hopefully, merging two pairs will work a lot better. Please give any newbies a few days to settle down, get used to the new routine and meet their future friends over the fence, so there are as few additional stress factors in the intros proper which will help with keeping things from blowing up.

 

[Puzzlepigs]

Hopefully two on two will be better and therefore they won't feel outnumbered. I'm just crossing my fingers and I'm hoping that it'll be second time lucky.