elmo1928
New Born Pup
Hi everyone, we got a baby pig in January after one of our older boar pair died. Things have been going well and they initially bonded well and were living together peacefully.. However recently the younger pig, Little Red (now 16 weeks) has started doing a lot more rumble strutting and humping behaviour and Caramel (5 years) couldn't get a moments peace yesterday evening. Caramel is relatively submissive I think as when Red rumble struts he does the chirping noise but he will only put up with it so far before they end up in a scuffle. The other morning when I came downstairs Red also had a tiny nick on his ear (now healed) which I am guessing was from Caramel.
I put up a temporary divider last night as I didn't want to leave them unsupervised overnight. It is a wire divider (similar to C&C style) so they can see each other and they calmed down a lot (lying down, eating hay etc) and although Red will still rumble strut from his side of the cage, Caramel is not bothered by this so I'm inclined to leave the divider in place until they can go into their (much larger) outdoor cage once the weather is warmer. However, the divider obviously makes the cage half the size for each of them so I'm in two minds about it.
Is this behaviour something which will pass in time and they can live together? Or should I just have them living side by side?
Also, if I do end up having them living side by side, can they live in two separate cages, one on top of the other? I'd struggle to extend the cage we have at the moment out the way but could put two layers. I'm not sure if this would be too similar to them being on their own though, or whether because they can still hear each other it would be okay?
I put up a temporary divider last night as I didn't want to leave them unsupervised overnight. It is a wire divider (similar to C&C style) so they can see each other and they calmed down a lot (lying down, eating hay etc) and although Red will still rumble strut from his side of the cage, Caramel is not bothered by this so I'm inclined to leave the divider in place until they can go into their (much larger) outdoor cage once the weather is warmer. However, the divider obviously makes the cage half the size for each of them so I'm in two minds about it.
Is this behaviour something which will pass in time and they can live together? Or should I just have them living side by side?
Also, if I do end up having them living side by side, can they live in two separate cages, one on top of the other? I'd struggle to extend the cage we have at the moment out the way but could put two layers. I'm not sure if this would be too similar to them being on their own though, or whether because they can still hear each other it would be okay?