Possible aggressive behavior?

[nat12]

Hello! I just came on here for some possible advice! Some background! I had two guinea pigs that I adopted from a shelter, sadly after a year one passed away. I won’t get into it as it’s still pretty sad, but my other guinea pig is perfect and healthy! After his partner died, he started to show signs of a depressed guinea pig, so I adopted a set of two boys to possibly bond him with, after quarantine them and making sure they were healthy I put their cages side by side so that they could smell each other! That went on for about a 2 weeks before introducing them to one another, their names are Tiny, Bugsy, and Spanky. Spanky is my original guinea pig from the first part of the post, spanky and tiny took great to each other, so then I introduced bugsy to spanky and I know males can be weird to bond, but bugsy seems overall very aggressive even with his form partner tiny, I separated bugsy from the group, he still wants to be around other piggies but is super aggressive towards them, constant humping, Tiny is form friend has old healed bites out of his ear, he will chase the other piggies, my other guinea spanky doesn’t put up the harrasment and stands his ground, they can’t be together as they did rip furr out of each other, I’m not sure how to set something up where he can still be around them but not in the same c&c, spanky and tiny are in a 4x2, I’m going to upgrade here soon and bugsy is in a 3x2, for the time being! Please help and please be kind

 

[fluffysal]

Welcome to the forum. Sadly boars do better in pairs and trios rarely work due to how the herd dynamics work.
I'm sure one of the experts will be along soon to link the relevant information threads.

 

[Piggies&buns]

Welcome to the forum

As you were finding three boars together doesn’t work. Three together find it almost impossible to form a functioning hierarchy (usually two try to be dominant and you can never have two dominants) and as such boars can only be kept in pairs. Almost all boar trios will unfortunately fail. So he isn’t being aggressive (mounting and chasing etc are simply dominance and not aggression), they just can’t find a way to get on.
Also, as you have found, introducing spanky to bugsy and tiny has broken the bond bugsy and tiny originally had. It’s great spanky and tiny now get on though as at least you have been able to make a functioning pair. The worst case scenario of adding a single boar to a bonded pair is that it ruins all bonds and you end up with three single boars.

Equally the space required to attempt three boars is huge and much beyond what most people can offer. Even with a lot of space the incompatibility is still the biggest issue and the bonding will usually fail.

You need to keep the piggies in separate but side by side cages - simply build it so the cages are adjoining on one wall in whatever configuration works best for your space.
Bugsy needs to be in a minimum of a 3x2 and Spanky and Tiny need a 5x2 cage. It could be that you have it in one long line to effectively be an 8x2 divided into a 3x2 and a 5x2; or have it L shaped; or more like a block.
Bugsy still needs to be able to interact with the others but only between the bars.
You will see dominance and territory marking behaviours between the bars as they patrol their own spaces - Things such as rumbling but also laying together against the dividing wall (this is not a friendly gesture and it instead called a power lie in).

Adding More Guinea Pigs Or Merging Pairs – What Works And What Not?[/URL