brothers fighting - decision to make please help!

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Sashe

Hi all,

I'm having a problem with my two male guinea pigs. I got them when they were babies in December last year. I was worried about having two males together from my experience with other rodents but was assured that as they were brothers this would not be a problem. They had some minor squabbles over the bed area/food bowl etc but most of the time got along really well. However, a couple of months ago I could hear a really loud squealing coming from their hutch in the back garden and noticed that one brother was mounting the other, who was getting really distressed. My partner and I took them out of the hutch and held them separately for a while, thinking that this might act as a cool-down period but when we put them back into the hutch the same thing happened again within seconds. I couldn't leave them together with one of them squealing so much and clearly in a lot of discomfort so I brought one inside and put him in an indoor cage overnight, thinking it might just be a one-off. But since then I have tried several times to put them back together, both in the home and on neutral territory and the same thing always happens. They are ok while distracted by a treat or for the first few minutes but then they both become very aggressive and circle eachother, chattering their teeth together and fighting. None has actually bitten the other yet but I'm certain that they could do some damage to one another if I wasn't there to stop it.

I have spoken to the vet about the situation and he suggested having them both castrated, as this problem only seems to have started since they came into maturity. Just wondered if anybody else had tried this and whether anyone has had any success with it in a similar situation. I really don't want to put my boys through the ordeal of surgery if it won't make any difference, especially with the risks of anaesthetics, but also they are social animals and I don't want them to be alone for the rest of their lives.

Should I try the castration thing or just accept the situation and house them separately but close to one another? Will the fact they have been separated for a while now make putting them back together harder?

Please help if you can as I don't know what to do :)

Thanks

Sashe x :D
 
:) Whilst anaesthetic shouldn't be a problem for a good vet, unless there are serious underlying respiratory probs that are undetectable pre op, then castration will not make enough difference to allow them to live together. They may get over it depending on their age. You should have been warned that this happen ::) If they don't 'get over it' they can be housed side by side in C+C caging or both castrated by a good guinea pig surgeon (use one that a rescue uses with success) and they can live with sows.

Your vet doesn't sound particularly guinea pig competent if he has suggested this, it works in other animals for certain, but, for some reason, not guineas.
 
Hi Sashe

We had exactly the same problem with our first two piggies (both now sadly passed away). They were father and son and fell out about 6 months after we got them when the younger started to try unsuccessfully to assert his dominance over his dad. We tried on several ocassions to re-bond them and although the father, Blaze, seemed quite willing to try and get on, his son, Scampy, would have none of it. They got in to a couple of fights an on the last ocassion I literally had to pull them apart as Scampy had sunk his teeth in to Blaze, fortunately not too deep to do any serious damage. We ended up housing them in a large CNC cgae seperated by a divider and they seemed happy with this arrangement as they used to snuggle up to each other via the divider.

I may be wrong about this but I don't think castration will help as we asked a similar question at the time our two fell out and got the impression that it wouldn't make any difference.

Hope that's of some help

Marty
 
Thanks for the advice :). To be honest they have been separated for a few months now and the problem doesn't seem to be resolving itself and I don't think that it will. I'm not sure what you mean by C+C sorry. At the moment the pig outside is in a hutch that has a run built in underneath and I was thinking of getting an identical one and placing them side by side so that when they are both in their runs they can see and talk to eachother. I don't know if this is the kind of thing you meant.

I like the idea of putting them with sows but I'm unsure as to whether I should buy a young sow or a rescued one of around the same age and I'm a bit scared that they won't get on and I'll end up needing 4 hutches! lol.

Sorry for all the questions I'm kind of new to the whole piggy thing and I didn't expect it all to go haywire!

Thanks again

Sashe x
 
Marty said:
We ended up housing them in a large CNC cgae seperated by a divider and they seemed happy with this arrangement as they used to snuggle up to each other via the divider.
Click to expand...

Thanks Marty, this really does help a lot, sounds like the perfect solution. Not sure where I could find a cage like that, never really seen anything similar that I can recall. Any ideas?

Thanks

Sashe x
 
Not sure exactly what CNC (or C+C) stands for but they're made of correx (the stuff they make estate agents signs out of) which can be bought from sign makers surrounded by grids which we bought from screwfix. They're are various ways of making them, it kind of depends on your set-up but they're specifically for indoor piggies and have to made up yourself (I had to do two new ones yesterday and they took an hour each).

I wouldn't like to advise on sows as we've no experience with them, but if you don't get them a sow each and don't want to house them indoors you need to make sure they can see and hear each other most of the time as they will still need the company. Two identical hutches/runs sound like a good idea to me, if they want to be sociable they can see and chat to each other whilst in the run part but if not, can keep themselves to themselves in the hutch part.

Marty
 
Having them both inside permanently isn't really an option as I still live with my parents and this would mean having a huge cage in my small bedroom :( I think I will go with the identical hutch idea for the reasons you have given.

Thanks everyone for the advice I'm glad I asked as I wouldn't have liked to put them through surgery for no reason :)

Thanks again

Sashe x
 
I had the same problem as you with 2 of my boars and they now live happily side by side, so the two hutches thing sounds ideal :)
 
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