Hi everyone!
I was looking at rescuing a pig, but I'm confused. I have two male bonded pigs (Buttercup and Truffle) but I see many people have 4 or 5 pigs in one cage. What pig could I add? I thought I'd build another CC cage beside to keep them separated but could I have two females beside them like this or no? Or even one male pig I saw that they say needs to be alone. Can I add another male? I feel that would be a disaster.
Which is why another cage beside would I think be fine. Just looking ahead in case I see a lonely pig that was abandoned by someone... it just makes me sad. I'd rescue them all if I could.
Hi!
Small boar groups are the most unstable combination with very high fail rates, so please don't add to a happy boar pair; you can - as have a number of members that have found our forum because of their problems over this - easily end with breaking the bond of your existing boys. Boar trios and quartets in trouble is one of the issues we see most often in this section.
In order to make a boar group work you need oodles of space, like ideally about half room or even a small room ground space to allow the boys to get away from each other. And the personality combination needs to be just right. A couple of teenagers on the rampage or a baby that is not accepted and you've had it! Boars work best either as pairs or in a larger bachelor herd if you can give them space - ideally about 1 square metre per boar.
Two neutered boars with any number of sows/two full boars with spayed sows is a big no no. While it may work very occasionally with two very laid-back boars or baby castrates (usually not practised outside German speaking countries), it generally doesn't work for any length of time; sooner or later there are fights and the group will have to be split.
When the chips are down, de-sexing either gender doesn't curb aggression, doesn't change personality and definitely doesn't change social interactive behaviours or group dynamics! Boars remain boars and sows remain sows, only they can't produce babies anymore.
Please always keep in mind that what you see online is never a realistic representation of reality. Any videos and pictures are driven by
human viewer interest - and who wants to see fighting or fallen-out boars? What people are showing off is what
people want to see on social media, not necessarily what works for your piggies! A group is a lovely thing but it is a dynamic situation that constantly evolves and that can turn sour at any moment; provided that it gets off the ground in the first place!
The same goes for any medical research; you get all the horror stories and the miracle cures, but you won't get a realistic picture of the very unsepectular normal recoveries because they are taken for granted and not worth posting about...
What you
can do with a boar couple and wanting to have more piggies is to adopt another stably bonded boar couple from a good standard rescue to keep in a second cage either next to or above your existing boys. Very rarely rescues have a stable adult boar trio - but that small number rather reflects reflects reality!
We do not recommend introducing sows into a boars-only room; sow pheromones can majorly upset even adult boars, never mind teenagers.
Larger groups are generally sows with or without a neutered 'husboar' but even there character compatibility and acceptance is key. With sows the most difficult time is not teenage but often in adult/older age when ovarian cysts and hormones hit.
I have had a few groups like that (the largest was 13 sows with a neutered patriarch in its heyday) but as piggies age and new career types come up through the ranks, dynamics change over the years and they can take a turn for the worse if a change in leadership is turning into a bit of a tyranny or you have several competing sows.
Keeping a working group is a wonderful thing but it is also very hard work and lots of sleepless nights behind the scenes. They do not normally happen out of the blue and stay harmonious just like that. You also have to consider the logistics re. cage cleaning, eating, more vet visits/emergencies and operations, deaths and emergency euthanasia (illness and deaths tend to happen in clusters in may own experience with larger numbers of piggies) etc.
The big question is always: Is it is worth the risk and are you really prepared deal and cope with the fall-out from ending up with 3 or 4 single boars that won't go back together or having to split a mixed gender group if things don't go to plan? Do you have the space and the money to accommodate all of them appropriately in case?
Can you afford the necessary vet fees and is your vet fund to deal with multiple abscesses from fights or can you afford neutering operations if you want each boar to live with a sow (which is the only thing that de-sexing boars does)?
If the answer is an honest 'no', then please don't even think about it and enjoy your two boys as they are!
Here is more information on what works and what not:
Adding More Guinea Pigs Or Merging Pairs – What Works And What Not?
