Trio troubles

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SayuriAndCo

Post   » Sat Nov 10, 2018 10:28 am


I have been reading threads on here avidly for a year or so and I’d like to start by thanking everyone on here for their input. My pigs owe their caliber of life to all the information on here.

I have a single female, Sayuri, who is about 1.5 years old at this point. She used to live with two sisters that I rescued at 4 years old and who passed at 5 and 5.5 years old. The second one, Sprinkle, passed fairly recently.

Sayuri can be a little grumpy and has some attitude issues. Her deceased cage mates just let her behaviors roll off their backs and didn’t pay her too much heed. They were respectful cagemates and lived together in peace.

With the passing of Sprinkle, Sayuri was clearly extremely lonely and bored. I looked for females up for adoption in my area.

I ended up getting two from a wildlife rescue. They were well meaning but ill equipped and ill educated on how to care for pigs.

There were five female pigs in a pen with two rabbits, outside, in the Florida heat.

I could only take 2 with my current cage size (realistically I could fit 4 pigs total but I don’t like to push it because Sayuri likes her space)

Because of their living conditions, I got the two new pigs (Chatty and Tippy) checked out by a vet immediately, and they have a clean bill of health at this point.

I also figured that these two new pigs would be easy to get along with because of how many pigs were crammed into that pen with no injuries.

Introductions got a little hairy at one point. Chatty was eating and Sayuri decided to try to bully Chatty out of her food. Chatty immediately put her in her place and ended up with a mouthful of Sayuri’s fur. This was hard to watch but we let it happen and no blood was drawn.

Intros went on for hours and there would be periods of rest followed by periods of Sayuri being chased by Chatty and screaming.
These chases were not necessarily aggressive. Chatty definitely wanted to smell Sayuri, and Sayuri felt like this invasion of personal space was threatening to her.

After several hours, the chasing seemed to stop, and all three pigs were exhausted, so we put them all in one big, clean cage.

So far, I haven’t seen any blatant aggression. But Sayuri is terrified of Chatty and Chatty uses this to bully her.

Sayuri barely leaves her hidey. And if she does leave, all it takes is a half a nip from Chatty and she hides again.

Every now and then Chatty will enter Sayuris hidey, and kick Sayuri out.

Everyone is maintaining their weight, and it’s only been a few days, but I am nervous that Sayuris quality of life has dropped considerably.

I haven’t seen any major red flags yet. I guess I am just looking for advice, tips or reassurance that I am doing the right thing.

Thank you!

bpatters
And got the T-shirt

Post   » Sat Nov 10, 2018 11:47 am


Sounds normal to me. Just be sure all the hideys have two doors so nobody gets trapped. Better yet, take them all out for a while and replace them with fleece forests or fleece strategically draped across the cage so the sight lines are broken up. "Out of sight, out of mind" definitely applies to guinea pig introductions.

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Sat Nov 10, 2018 2:48 pm


Ditto the fleece forests (fringed pieces of fleece draped across the cage to break up sight). How big is the cage?

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