Is it Safe? Keeping a herd and pair of boars cage adjacent?

[ashlandr]

So currently I have 2 boars in a 2x4 c&c cage (with an expansion on the way). However, I'm very interested to start a herd. I'd like to start a herd in a separate cage of course, and my idea is to either stack the cages or make the herd and pair cage adjacent.

However, I recall reading once that keeping sows in the same room as multiple boars will cause the boars to fight even if the boars and sows are not living in the same cage due to smelling sows nearby. As I've been doing my research (I'm still a fairly new pig owner), I haven't come across anything verifying this. So my question is, will it affect my boars to have a herd housed in the same room?

 

[bpatters]

Maybe. Maybe not. We've seen it go both ways on this forum. You'd just have to try it and see.

But if you've got boars and sows in the same room, put the boars on the bottom if you stack the cages, and make sure the sows can't climb out of their cage and fall in with the boars. If the cages are on the same level, put a lid on the sows' cage. A determined boar can push up the lid on his own cage, but he can't lift the lid on another cage.

 

[Soecara]

I keep boars and sows in the same room, but they can not see each other. They can smell/hear each other but that hasn't caused an issue. This is how I have kept several different boar pairs and sow groups over the years, I have only have issues with it twice.

Once was my fault because I mixed up their hidey houses while cleaning the cages and accidentally gave a boar pair a sow hidey, a bloody fight ensued, but once everyone had healed those two boys were successfully re-introduced and lived out the rest of their lives together incident free. I now have the sows hideys/water bottles/everything in a different colour to the boys to prevent myself from making that mistake again.

The other problem was just a boar pair that weren't all that compatible, being able to hear/smell sows made the issue worse and I could only get them to co-exist in the same cage in a completely different room to the girls.