Can I add a baby boy to an adult pair of boys?

[Tinkerwdw]

So, we adopted a baby boy who is just so precious. I know I didn’t research the bonding process before, and now all I am reading is how adding a third can disrupt the dynamic of the pair. Right now I have the baby in his own cage to start “introducing” them, and I was going to introduce one at a time.
Neither of my two adult males right now are aggressive- one has a little more energy, but the other one is quite submissive. The baby of course is just calm and sweet.

So I am wondering should I even try to bond them, or just try to adopt another baby to make two pairs? I did put two of them together today, and the older one actually tried to hide from him, even though the baby didn’t even move.

 

[Piggies&buns]

Please don’t add a third boar to a bonded pair. It is highly likely to cause problems at some point. Most boar trios will fail due to character incompatibility mostly but a lot of people also don’t realise that a boar trio need much larger than normal cage sizing requirements (a minimum of 300x100cm cage would be needed to attempt it but space alone isn’t enough to make it work). Babies are in desperate need of companionship so they may be accepted initially into a trio (sometimes it fails immediately) but once that baby hits his teens, that it usually when things go wrong. At best, you’d get a fight and they would need to be separated into a pair and a single but at worst it can break all bonds, including the one between the original pair meaning you end up with three single piggies.
Please do adopt another piggy and bond with the baby and keep two separate pairs.

Adding More Guinea Pigs Or Merging Pairs – What Works And What Not?

Please also take time to read how to carry out a bonding when you do get the baby a new friend.
For boars it’s a one time event on neutral territory and cannot be done slowly. You put the two of them in a neutral territory bonding pen for several hours and keep an eye on them. After several hours if things have gone well, then you clean down the cage they are to live in and transfer them to it to live together from then on. It then takes two weeks for them to fully form their bond. You cannot put boars together and then separate and then try again the next day as it interrupts, and in some cases hampers, the bonding process and means they must start all over again each and every time.
If you get another baby to bond with your current baby, then the bonding needs to be done straight away as babies under four months of age are desperate for companionship.

Bonding and Interaction: Illustrated social behaviours and bonding dynamics

 

[VickiA]

Completely - it is just not worth attempting to have a boar trio. It would be much better to adopt another baby boar and keep them as 2 separate pairs. Great advice about bonding given in the post above.

 

[Tinkerwdw]

Please don’t add a third boar to a bonded pair. It is highly likely to cause problems at some point. Most boar trios will fail due to character incompatibility mostly but a lot of people also don’t realise that a boar trio need much larger than normal cage sizing requirements (a minimum of 300x100cm cage would be needed to attempt it but space alone isn’t enough to make it work). Babies are in desperate need of companionship so they may be accepted initially into a trio (sometimes it fails immediately) but once that baby hits his teens, that it usually when things go wrong. At best, you’d get a fight and they would need to be separated into a pair and a single but at worst it can break all bonds, including the one between the original pair meaning you end up with three single piggies.
Please do adopt another piggy and bond with the baby and keep two separate pairs.

Adding More Guinea Pigs Or Merging Pairs – What Works And What Not?

Please also take time to read how to carry out a bonding when you do get the baby a new friend.
For boars it’s a one time event on neutral territory and cannot be done slowly. You put the two of them in a neutral territory bonding pen for several hours and keep an eye on them. After several hours if things have gone well, then you clean down the cage they are to live in and transfer them to it to live together from then on. It then takes two weeks for them to fully form their bond. You cannot put boars together and then separate and then try again the next day as it interrupts, and in some cases hampers, the bonding process and means they must start all over again each and every time.
If you get another baby to bond with your current baby, then the bonding needs to be done straight away as babies under four months of age are desperate for companionship.

Bonding and Interaction: Illustrated social behaviours and bonding dynamics

Thank you so much! This was very helpful!