Please help - at my wit's end!

[Wheeky]

Manny is obsessed with my older piggies and it's driving me crazy.

It all started yesterday when I opened the gate to let Bernard and Manny out for floortime. After a few minutes, Ollie (one of my older pigs) came out from under a box (I hadn't realised he was hiding there, I thought he was back in his cage). They started chasing each other, but I got Ollie back into his cage.

Well, now Manny just won't drop it. It started with bar biting, so I slipped some correx between the cages. Then at 1am I woke up to a commotion and discovered that Manny had somehow managed to get into my older boys' cage! I put him back, and went back to bed. Not long after, I found him in there again; this time I watched to see how he was doing it, turns out he was climbing on his house and jumping over the grids.
So I moved the house to the middle of the cage and added a second height of grids across the divide just in case.

Now he can't physically get in, but he's kept me awake all night bar biting, pulling the correx, jumping on his house, squealing etc. In the end I was in tears because I was so tired and didn't know what to do.

Help! 8...

 

[gogoguineas]

First of all, love their names! I'm a massive black books fan
Second of all you've done the right thing. I think manny is very curious about this older piggie, is manny a youngster? If so i would see if it's possible to put manny and bernard in another room or vice versa. Or how about floor time with a division and lots of veggies as a distraction? I'm wondering if manny needs to get it out of his system if you like, maybe he needs to realise the other pig isn't a threat etc. How does ollie react to manny?

 

[Wheeky]

An update ...

Another sleepless night last night chasing after Manny. I've managed to get it so he can't physically get into the big cage, but I had a big wall of fleece pegged up to try and stop the biting (he was close to pulling the whole wall of grids down on top of himself!) Good in theory, but no matter how tightly and securely I attached the fleece, he kept managing to worm his way between it and the grid wall. I'd keep looking in to he'd trapped himself there and couldn't get out. I was terrified of going to sleep in case he got himself trapped all night and suffocated or got hurt.
In the end I thought, "right, I give up!" and took the extra grids and fence down (so the cage was like it used to be at the beginning). That did the trick ... because there was nowhere for him to burrow behind, he just lost interest.
He still bites the bars a little, and spies on my big pigs, but he's nowhere near as bad. I hope he gets it out of his system. rolleyes

 

[gogoguineas]

Yeah I think unless you were to put them in different rooms he has to get it out of his system, maybe the obstruction was just posing as a challenge :{
Boys eh?!

 

[flips]

Well done for persevering. I hope the peace continues. x

 

[piggyfan]

Oh my god he is persistent! You poor thing. I hope all is okay now.