This is genuinely a question born out of curiosity rather than intention.
I have two boars who have lived next to each other in separate C&Cs since last February. At four months old, we moved them from their shared WAY TOO SMALL cage into a 2x6 and they immediately had a fight. We separated them immediately because we couldn’t tell if there had been biting or if one of them had gotten scraped on a grid. They’ve lived side by side in 2x4s ever since.
I was thinking today as I was sweeping kicked up hay and poop: could they ever be friends? They mirror each other’s behavior all the time, they definitely have some cross-contamination of smells and debris (sometimes cage accessories too, if I’m honest), and they literally spend all of their time together. I’m probably never going to attempt to re-cohabitate them, but it got me wondering if having that barrier between them for so long had any effect on their bonding potential; if they were to be suddenly reintroduced into each other’s physical space would they be more or less likely to fight than if, say, they’d never met? Or were separated after failing to bond?
I have two boars who have lived next to each other in separate C&Cs since last February. At four months old, we moved them from their shared WAY TOO SMALL cage into a 2x6 and they immediately had a fight. We separated them immediately because we couldn’t tell if there had been biting or if one of them had gotten scraped on a grid. They’ve lived side by side in 2x4s ever since.
I was thinking today as I was sweeping kicked up hay and poop: could they ever be friends? They mirror each other’s behavior all the time, they definitely have some cross-contamination of smells and debris (sometimes cage accessories too, if I’m honest), and they literally spend all of their time together. I’m probably never going to attempt to re-cohabitate them, but it got me wondering if having that barrier between them for so long had any effect on their bonding potential; if they were to be suddenly reintroduced into each other’s physical space would they be more or less likely to fight than if, say, they’d never met? Or were separated after failing to bond?