Pig bites me when other piggy around, fuss pot otherwise !

[bridd]

Hi there, my first post Me and my wife bought two lovely little female pigs at the end of May. They've gradually gone from both fairly skittish to one really tame piggy ("Little Bit") and one skittish-but-likes-fuss-sometimes pig ("Biscuit"). Bit is definitely the dominant pig of the pair, they eat together but quite often she'll bustle Biscuit away quite firmly (snout push to the side/front of her). Bit enjoys being handled, and a few nights ago she let me tickle her tummy while she sortof lay upside with one of my hands supporting her while she was on my lap. Biscuit will sit on me until the fresh food I'm feeding her runs out, squeaks throughout, though has settled into fuss on a couple of occasions.

The thing I'm wondering about is that I've had both piggies on me for fuss, as it seems to calm Biscuit down, but Bit seems to get a little aggressive -I went to tickle her tummy (without rolling her over!) which normally she likes and I a little buzz of a bite! :'( Once I took Biscuit away, she went back to being her normal fuss-pot self. This has happened a couple of times now, each time if I take Biscuit away, Bit calms down. I'm trying to figure this out, I have to wonder if Bit is either jealous in some way of Biscuit being around when I'm fussing and it makes her angsty, OR she's mistaking my fuss for Biscuit and that's why I'm getting bitten. Anyone else had anything like this with their piggies?

 

[boureki]

Hi, welcome to the forum

My friend's guineas have this going on as well - if she has them both on her lap together, the dominant one gets jealous of the other if he gets stroked when he isn't being stroked and gets a bit fussy! I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it sounds like jealousy - perhaps you could stroke both at the same time ;D

Some pigs just don't like to be held and I wouldn't take it personally - the fact that one of them does like a cuddle would suggest that you are doing nothing wrong. But some are just too nosy, we had a bonded pair who the dominant one was bold and fearless and could be a bit of a biter - he couldn't bear laptime, he wanted to be off and exploring, was always trying to escape! Whereas his cagemate was content for cuddles and laptime and used to sit on my shoulder for ages quite happily. So a lot depends on the personality of the pig I think.