Fighting Fights and blood

pigaroo · Nov 24, 2017

Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum, and I need some help with guinea pig fighting problems.

We have 3 male guinea pigs, all adopted. One is about 4 years old, adopted for 2 years, the other two are around 1.5 years old, adopted for half a year, one is black, one is brown. The black one is cuddly, and the brown one is very scared of humans. Whole cage is 2x6. The two young ones have trouble getting along.

When the two young ones were first adopted, they got along. After a month or so, they started fighting. So we separated them and reintroduced. They stopped fighting for another few months. Recently the black one has been trying to hump the old one, and being aggressive towards the brown one. They chatter every time they are close, and sometimes the black one would suddenly "fly" to the brown one and cause a fight. However, the black loses every time and get hurt. His right ear is broken by the brown one a few times, and have bite injuries on his body. We seperated them as we found out, and put the black one in the divided cage, so he gets 2x2 and the other two get 2x4. However, he's not happy with being alone and always bites the cage.

Since he's causing fights with the brown one and always mounts the old one, we think he's the trouble maker. And since he's not happy with being alone, we're thinking about giving him to someone that has a guinea pig, but we're not sure if that would be a good idea or not...

Any suggestions?

Thanks a lot!

bpatters · Nov 24, 2017

Separate them and find another buddy for one of them, or rehome one of them. It's almost impossible to have three boars live together. Two can make it, and sometimes a large herd of boars can, but it's very rare for three males to get along.

But a 2x2 isn't large enough for a guinea pig. No wonder he's biting the cage bars, never mind that he's adjacent to the other two. So you need to make some other arrangements pretty quickly.

pigaroo · Nov 24, 2017

bpatters said:
Separate them and find another buddy for one of them, or rehome one of them. It's almost impossible to have three boars live together. Two can make it, and sometimes a large herd of boars can, but it's very rare for three males to get along.

But a 2x2 isn't large enough for a guinea pig. No wonder he's biting the cage bars, never mind that he's adjacent to the other two. So you need to make some other arrangements pretty quickly.

Thanks a lot, I think we might have to rehome one, as we don't have a huge place. Should we rehome the black one who humps the old one, or the brown one, who is scared of humans?

bpatters · Nov 24, 2017

If you've got two that get along, keep them and rehome the other one.

pigaroo · Dec 18, 2017

3 weeks later now and they still don't get along...

A little more about my pigs: one is 4 years old, name's Pig Pig; one is 1 year old, name's Teddy; one is 1.5 years old, name's Nibbles. Pig pig doesn't mind any of the others, and never had a fight with anyone.

But Nibbles and Teddy fight a lot for unknown reasons. Every time they see each other ( literally EVERY TIME), they both starts to chatter. Usually Teddy would run away when they are facing each other, but Nibbles would chase him and starts a fight.

We do not have enough space or time for another pig, so separation might not be the best solution. We tried to rehome Teddy. No one wanted him probably because he's not very intimate with humans ( he runs away from human). Then we tried to introduce all three again in a neutral area, and increased the cage size from 2x6 to 4x5. They still fight or tried to fight when they see each other. Think they're probably arch enemies. They used to fight so hard that Nibbles ears have a lot of bite scars, and sometimes have bloody bite spots on the body ( even though Nibbles is usually the one starting the fight ). Now they don't get bloody anymore, but they both bite each other's fur off a lot.

Please help! Can we make them friends again? Or do we have to rehome one?

pigaroo · Dec 18, 2017

[video=youtube_share;95Fc7UkT2Oo]https://youtu.be/95Fc7UkT2Oo[/video]

This is a video of them fighting. The one who ran away is Teddy, the one who was chasing is Nibbles. I'm sorry that the video is blurry...

lattiee · Dec 20, 2017

it seems to me that since Teddy likes being around guinea pigs and tries to run away but it sounds like Nibbles is the fighter of both of the starting and continuing with it. I would suggest rehoming Nibbles or sending him off to the rescue because once you remove Teddy there is a chance that Nibbles could start to lash out at Pig Pig even tho Pig Pig is older since Nibbles has a Strong Alpha Male behavior to him so to me I wouldn't want to risk that .

So either rehome Nibbles, send him to a rescue where a rescue could find him a proper home which will be more safety for Pig Pig and Teddy !

bpatters · Dec 20, 2017

I'd separate one of the two that fight all the time, and either rehome him or put him in an adjacent cage.

BTW, your story is just one more in the very long line of "three males almost NEVER get along together."

pigaroo · Dec 26, 2017

bpatters said:
BTW, your story is just one more in the very long line of "three males almost NEVER get along together."

Thanks. I understand this now but at the time I got the 3rd one, we did not see that much info about getting 3 pigs. Most we've seen was "they need a big enough space". But that's too late to know now as the 3rd one is already a part of the family.

We separated the 2 that fights. The fighter pig is in the divided cage (4x2) and the defender pig is with the old pig (4x3). But the fighter pig used to like the old pig, so now whenever he sees the old pig across the divider, he stares at him and purrs. That looks so sad that he just wants to get back with his friend

pigaroo · Dec 26, 2017

lattiee said:
So either rehome Nibbles, send him to a rescue where a rescue could find him a proper home which will be more safety for Pig Pig and Teddy !

So hard to rehome a guinea pig these days because of thanksgiving and christmas. A lot of people are giving away guinea pigs with cages and food. Since we still need the cage and food for our other 2 pigs, we cannot provide extras, and that makes it a lot harder to rehome a pig for us.

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