When to know when to stop if things are going good?

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ljgstretch

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Hi! I am bonding two bonded pairs of girls. The older pair is 2 years old and the younger pair is about 7 months old. It's been an hour and 2 minutes since I put all of them into a neutral space play pen. Behaviors include teath chattering, chasing, butt smelling, cleaning babies ears (my alpha of my older girls), complaining noises, and a tiny bit of nose punching. How will I know it's okay to house them together? I read the forum about the bonding process and I know to remove them once blood is drawn, but they seem good right now. The face offs between the older girls are brief and they don't charge, but one will walk away from the face off. Any advice would help! I'm giving them more hay right now
 

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ljgstretch said:
Hi! I am bonding two bonded pairs of girls. The older pair is 2 years old and the younger pair is about 7 months old. It's been an hour and 2 minutes since I put all of them into a neutral space play pen. Behaviors include teath chattering, chasing, butt smelling, cleaning babies ears (my alpha of my older girls), complaining noises, and a tiny bit of nose punching. How will I know it's okay to house them together? I read the forum about the bonding process and I know to remove them once blood is drawn, but they seem good right now. The face offs between the older girls are brief and they don't charge, but one will walk away from the face off. Any advice would help! I'm giving them more hay right now
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Hi!

You can move them to the cage anytime now if you wish. I prefer to keep my own bonding groups/pairs in the bonding pen for longer until ideally the roughest bit of dominance is out of the way. It means that it is quieter when you move them into their cage and less hierarchy establishing will happen there. Your dominance behaviours sound rather in the mild zone now, especially if the teeth chattering is in low 'complaining' and not in the loud 'protesting'/'warning' range.

But once the crucial acceptance and sort-out between the older under-sow and the younger top-sow has happened they are basically fine to go back as the rest of the hierarchy will only have to be reaffirmed but not established from scratch since the pairs know where they stand with each other. Just make sure that you sprinkle feed and introduce tunnels and houses with two exits once things in the cage have settled down some with a little flare up of dominance in new territory.
 
Yeah I'm going to leave them in longer because I agree in getting all that dominance out. But yeah Honey (second in command of the older girls) usually dislikes the babies, but she's just been smelling them and eating in close proximity to them. Which is good because my alpha Mellow is super sweet, just smells them and cleans their ears. Jupiter the skinny pig from the babies is skittish around Honeybee but she let's her smell her for a little bit before running away.
 
Both older girls laying and watching Bumble (little black guinea pig).
 

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ljgstretch said:
Yeah I'm going to leave them in longer because I agree in getting all that dominance out. But yeah Honey (second in command of the older girls) usually dislikes the babies, but she's just been smelling them and eating in close proximity to them. Which is good because my alpha Mellow is super sweet, just smells them and cleans their ears. Jupiter the skinny pig from the babies is skittish around Honeybee but she let's her smell her for a little bit before running away.
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Honey will be the one throwing her weight around because she wants to keep her position as second in command in the hierarchy. As long as the youngsters are not challenging her (and it doesn't sound like they), things are fine. Just expect a bit more of the same over the coming days. Mellow will not interfere because her own position is not in question. However, I would not wory; if the piggies are sleeping/resting near each other in between bonding rounds, then it means that they want to stay together and have accepted each other.
 
Yeah the babies just run away or let her smell them. I just got this photo of them right now. Bumble always wanted to be one of the big girls.
 

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Update: Both of their cages are combined and it's relatively quiet. Honey still chases the babies around, but on inspection, Jupiter (skinny pig) has a couple tiny scratches on her. Is that normal after putting them in the same cage? Jupiter nor Bumble challenge either one of the older girls still. Honey has actually came around and was doing some ear cleaning to Jupiter when I took her out, while she was doing it she was complaining (she's very dramatic). Jupiter and Honey shared dinner together tonight, Jupiter even tried to steal food from Honey.
 
Have they broken the skin or is it just marks on the skin?

I have 2 skinny pigs and they do get marks where they've itched themselves or accidentally scratched each other. They don't break the skin though.
 
If breaking the skin means creating a scab, then yes. I also would like to include during the whole night they were quiet and there was no excessive chasing or complaining on Honeys part.
 
Update: I removed both pairs into their separate cages because upon expecting I saw Jupiter with bigger cuts than before. It just doesn't make sense that during the bonding process, which was a total of almost 4 hours, that they were all fine but moving them into the cage was a problem.
 

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ljgstretch said:
Update: Both of their cages are combined and it's relatively quiet. Honey still chases the babies around, but on inspection, Jupiter (skinny pig) has a couple tiny scratches on her. Is that normal after putting them in the same cage? Jupiter nor Bumble challenge either one of the older girls still. Honey has actually came around and was doing some ear cleaning to Jupiter when I took her out, while she was doing it she was complaining (she's very dramatic). Jupiter and Honey shared dinner together tonight, Jupiter even tried to steal food from Honey.
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Scratches on skinnies during bonding and the dominance phase are very normal. Many dominance behaviours are carefully judged gestures of power that are designed to let the under-pig feel it without pain or breaking the skin - but of course, they have devoped in fully furred piggies, which is a protective layer that skinnies lack.

Food snatching in younger piggies is how they learn to master their environment and what is safe to eat or not.
In a bonding context, this behaviour signals that Jupiter has fully accepted Honey as her guardian and teacher; it is another way of reassuring Honey that she is safe in her position as the First Lady's deputy. ;)
 
ljgstretch said:
Because those marks are really concerning and I don't want her to get any more of those.
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They look like nipping marks to me (NOT intentional bite marks) - in a furred piggy they would not break the skin.
Please disinfect. The worst of the dominance should be over now.
 
Wiebke said:
They look like nipping marks to me (NOT intentional bite marks) - in a furred piggy they would not break the skin.
Please disinfect. The worst of the dominance s
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Oh okay as long as this isn't life threatening this is good to know.
 
ljgstretch said:
Oh okay as long as this isn't life threatening this is good to know.
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This is just a very small shallow surface wound. If you want to live with skinnies in a group, you'd better get used to scratches and scrapes.
 
Wiebke said:
This is just a very small shallow surface wound. If you want to live with skinnies in a group, you'd better get used to scratches and scrapes.
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Yeah that was my original thought since she didn't have hair, but it's hard to know the difference between an intentional and unintentional bite mark. Barrier has been removed and Honey was laying down next to Jupiter at the hay rack. Mellow is trying to clean Jupiter's wounds too and Honey was briefly.
 

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