adding a 3rd (older) male to 2 (young) bonded males, please reply soon if possible

[kulisek]

Hi everyone, I'd be very gratefull if you could pls. give me some advice on this problem:

I have two male piggies (7 month and 5-6 month old) and would like to add to them my sister's (and previously also mine but I don't live with my sister and parents anymore) boar who's almost 4 years old. Unfortunately I don't have a big enough cage for the three of them yet (I really hope to arrange it soon). So I was wondering what would happen If I meanwhile placed the older piggy in his own cage right next to the cage of my 2 piggies until I am able to put them all into a new large enough cage?

In fact my question is whether I should properly introduce them (face to face, e.g. during the bath) before I place them next to each other, or should I do that only before I actually put them alltogether in one cage? I would think that the latter is correct, but am not sure, and also, if I place them next to each other without introducing them first, will it be good for them and couldn't it have any bad influence on the whole introduction thing?

Thank you very much for any (preferably quick) advice! I really don't want to keep the oldest piggy alone anymore, and would like to do all this asap.

P.S. I've been through the "social life part" on the cavyspirit.com webpage and also other pages, but couldn't find any information about this specific problem there.

[Karsluma]

I ended up getting an older piggie (1+years) and putting him with my two youngsters. It actually ended up working out well - the older one claimed dominance and quickly became attached to the laid-back young one. The other young one was not accepted by the new older one at first - but there was no real fighting - he would just growl (deep purring) at the young one until he backed away. So I'd often find older pig + laid-back young pig sleeping together in the pigloo.

But it's only been a week and already "gramps" is getting more tolerant of the crazy one.

[mikew]

From what I have heard (being pretty new to having guinea pigs), putting the cages next to each other is a good idea so they get used to each other even though they will not have direct contact with each other. I also heard that when you do introduce them to the new cage to make sure everything is mixed up and not exactly the same. This helps so that the cavies won't think that they dominate an area or a toy, etc; something like that.