Can you try to introduce a young un-neutered bore with a bonded female pair?

[PigQuestions]

we will neuter when they are old enough but they are 13 weeks and I think their bond may have been broken so I’m hoping housing them with our girls is our back up plan..
2 bonded female pairs so the boys will be separate and can’t fight

 

[Piggies&buns]

to the forum

I'm sorry to hear their bond has broken.

While they are unneutered you obviously cannot introduce them but once they are neutered and six weeks post neuter safe then absolutely yes you can try to introduce each boar to their own sows (cage size permitting 180x60cm for three piggies). You do have quite some wait for them to be old enough to be neutered and then infertile though. In the meantime the boys need to be kept in side by side cages with each other so they can interact between the bars only.

How old are the sows? If they are young, they are likely to be accepting of a neutered boar. The sows need to accept the boar, not the other way around.

The guides below explain everything further.

Neutered / De-sexed Boars And Neutering Operations: Myths, Facts and Post-op Care
A Closer Look At Pairs (Boars - Sows - Mixed)

Bonding and Interaction: Illustrated social behaviours and bonding dynamics
Adding More Guinea Pigs Or Merging Pairs – What Works And What Not?

 

[Wiebke]

Hi and welcome

Good that you are asking before you are acting!

Any full boar over 3 weeks is a big no no around sows. The ladies are nonstop breeding machines which come into season again within hours of giving birth until they die giving birth or their bodies give out. Guinea pigs start procreating as soon as they are weaned and there is no menopause. I know of a 9 years old sow becoming pregnant when put with a boar during a holiday - needless to say that it didn't end well.
About every 5th birth ends with the death of babies and/or the mother - and that is the best case scenario. Biology is brutal for guinea pigs. It is the price they pay for having (together with their larger swamp cousins, the capybaras) the largest and most developed babies of all rodents, which are able to follow the group and survive on their own just a day or two after birth.
You cannot just take the boar out every few days because that will seriously destabilise the bond. If a season happens overnight or spontaneously during the introduction, you have had it because the act itself takes just seconds and you cannot get at them that quickly. It is not a matter of whether it happens, it will be a matter of how soon it is going to happen.
It is all even more complicated because not sexual mounting is also a normal daily dominance behaviour for some boars (and is in this context also occasionally used by sows, especially sows in season).

I have adopted plenty of piggies from uncontrolled procreating situations backgrounds (hoarding) where things quickly got out of hand once the babies got going. It is one of the reasons why we have a strict no intentional breeding/putting mixed genders together without one party being safely de-sexed.

The best way forward for you is to keep your boy in an adjoining cage for the time being with interaction through the bars while making sure that he cannot climb/jump across he divider/cage or wiggle loose any grids in order to get a sow in season. Please cable-tie all adjoining grids and peg a sheet over the top of the boy's pen along the divider so that he cannot get over the top.
For the longer term you might want consider neutering. Please note that a single boar can live alongside sows but not most bonded boars unless you want to risk fall-outs.
Neutered / De-sexed Boars And Neutering Operations: Myths, Facts and Post-op Care