Will it ever work?

[Ree]

Well I went to the rescue yesterday and got 2 gorgeous females, they're a bit older than I wanted for introductions but I couldn't resist!

I got them with the intention of eventually putting them in with Harry and Heidi but now I'm having even more serious doubts than I had last week, I just put harry (my neutered boy) on the settee with a bunch of hay and one of the new girls (hermy) and after he sniffed and licked her bum for 10 minutes >>> he did his funky rumbledance, chattered his teeth then nipped her. I thought it would be Heidi who would be the aggressive one as she was the one who nipped the others in the rescue so I'm gutted Harry's done it too.

Am I just being over cautious? Do they usually do this? I was sitting right next to them watching them like a hawk so I felt very jumpy anyway as he's twice the size of her.

If I put in a lot of work and do all of this very, VERY slowly will it work eventually? My plan is to give them all a bath together (after a week or so when the new girls settle in) then put them into each others dirty cages to get used to the smell, then put them all on the floor together. After that I'll thoroughly clean the big cage and put them all in that.

I'd rather not stress them with all of this if it's never going to work so if someone could let me know whether it's worth trying I'd really appreciate it.

 

[Wiebke]

Perhaps it might work better, if you could have the cages next to each other, so they can get to know each other better first through the bars; ideally for at least a day or two, or even longer.

Don't put them in each other's cages, but introduce them somewhere where none of them has been before. I introduced my new girls to my bonded couple on a day when I was pretty sure that a) little Nia was the dominant one and b) that she was in season, so the introduction went VERY well, as he wanted her and she wanted him straight away.

Be aware that a bonded couple can reject a newcomer, so take introductions slowly.

I started introductions like this (food is always good for bonding over!):

Best of luck!

 

[Ree]

Oh bless 'them, they're so cute!

So did it work out with your 4 in the end Vicky? Sounds like a very similar situation to mine (bonded couple and 2 newcomers), I'm all hopeful now!

I'll put the 2 cages together and see what happens, thanks Vicky

 

[Wiebke]

Like that a few days later; though I had some girls only bonding sessions in between:

Make sure that you have LONG stretches of time when you put them together, so they can really work out on getting to know each other. I was lucky that there was no real aggression in it all; just a lot of squeaking, chasing and the odd (threat) chattering from Dizzy. There might be quite a bit of posing, thratening (like chattering and yawning), but as long as there are no bloody fights, I would not intervene. If your new girls are not in season, they might tell your boy to go elsewhere quite emphatically! And expect dominance behaviour between the girls!

However, in all fairness, I had tried bonding a different single girl before, which went horribly wrong; but I think this was due to the fact that that girl had been just rescued from living all her life with a rabbit in a cramped cage; and the non-specialised rescue hadn't tried her out on other pigs before putting her up for adoption, nor seen the necessity of giving me that vital bit of information BEFORE the adoption, as they thought in all sincerity you could just put piggies together and stick it out! (She promptly attacked my Dizzy, and it went downhill from there).

So I really appreciated when the second time round went well.

 

[Ree]

Well so far the newbies have been extremeley submissive to the others, Hermy just laid down and let him sniff all over (and when I say all over I mean all over....yuck) she wasn't aggressive at all other than eyeballing him a bit when he was chattering.

One thing I am chuffed about is that the new girls seem to get on very well together and are very tame. They let me pick them up without any fuss (took me ages with the other 2) and rush out of their hidey holes squeeking and wheeking when they hear the hay bag rustle. Credit to the rescue lady for doing such a good job with them, they've obviously had a lot of love.

I'll update over the coming weeks, hopefully if I do anything wrong I can quickly be put right, this is such a big deal to me at the moment I want to do it perfect!

Thanks for the help Vicky, your piggies are ADORABLE btw! drool