Can guinea-pigs not live together but go in a run together?

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Alicia

Alicia

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At the moment I have 4 hutches, and I have 5 guinea-pigs, 2 sows and 3 boars. All the boars live seperatly at the moment because they fight. My mum suggested that when the boars die, we get sows and put lots of sows in the hutches then let them out into the run together. So all the sows would be in different hutches but they could go in the run together. Would this work do you think? I've worked it out and between the 4 hutches I could probably have about 10 sows, and I'd like to do this because I like big groups of guinea-pigs together, they're very interesting to watch. I obviously don't want my boars to die and I'd never give them away or anything but I'm just planning for the future.
 
In the hutches, I'm guessing they can't really see each other, so they wouldn't know each other very well. So when they're in the run, they might be a bit stressed because they're not all friends, like when guinea pigs first meet it might be stressful. Or maybe if they're in the run everyday then they might all know each other well enough.

How big is the run, is it big enough for that many to play together?

Is there any way you could join all the hutches together in the future? Like cut holes in them, and put them next to each other so all the sows could share all the hutches and be friends? That'd be cool. :)

And what ages are your boars? If they live a few more years then the hutches might be old and you might need to get new ones anyway, so then you could just buy one big one instead :)
 
I've put two large groups of sows together in a run but they also had a neutered boar in with them. He usually sorted out any squabbles and they got along famously.

They could see each other all the time in the shed though so I suppose it wasn't as though they didn't know one another. Depends on the individual piggies I guess
 
When i had 5 boys, 2 lived together but all went into the run together, however it was approx 14ft x 11ft.
Now my 5 girls share the run with my neutered boar/sow pair :)
 
You can, if you give the sows regular (preferably) daily run time together througout the whole year, so they are used to each other and do not have to sort out the dominance all the time.

Perhaps you can join the two hutches, so piggies can get from one into the other?
 
I might try joining 2 hutches so they could all live together, but they would go in the run together daily from 8am to 9pm in the summer and until 5pm in the winter so they'd be together for a long time. I'll try introducing them and things like that to see if they'd get on
 
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