Biting Guinea pig biting and scratching others

[chilli]

Hi everyone, I'm rather new to owning guinea pigs and I have four male guinea pigs named Joey, Oscar, Kanye and Larry.
Larry is Joeys dad and they have been together all their life so they get along well. I got Oscar and Kanye from a pet store. (I know that it is bad to get guinea pigs from pet stores). I had Joey and Larry for maybe a month before I got Oscar and Kanye. They originally all got along pretty well until recently. This morning when I went to feed all of them I heard a small scream/whine noise and Larry ran outside of the indoor part of their hutch. The first thing I saw was that he had a large part of his ear bitten off and there was some blood around the area. I really wanted to take him to the vet but the vet isn't open until Tuesday and it is Saturday. I put him in a box with some hay, grass, food and water and brought him into my room. He was sitting in the corner of the box and barely moving for a long time so I brought Joey inside too and the two of them were getting along reasonably well. I decided to take them both out to the hutch again but this time Kanye was attacking Larry and Joey too. Whenever Joey would try to run outside of the indoor part, Kanye would pull him back in. Not only this, but he was also chasing Joey around and trying to get sexual (You know what I mean) with him even though they are both males. So now I am currently sitting in my room with Kanye in the box by himself and I have no idea what to do. I'm sure that there is something that I may be doing wrong but that's because I am 15 and the guinea pigs are basically my responsibility

 

[bpatters]

Your problem is probably trying to put too many male guinea pigs together in too small a space. It's very hard to have more than two male guinea pigs together, and we never recommend it. Also, most hutches are not designed for guinea pigs, and the layout of the walls, ramps, doors etc. may be contributing to their aggression.

Guinea pigs need a large flat space to run in. No hideys should ever have only one door -- every pig should be able to escape. Otherwise, the trapping pig will just get its face slashed. It The pen shouldn't have doors, and if there are ramps, there should be two -- one up, and one down.

The "getting sexual," as you put it, is dominance behavior. One of them is going to wind up being top pig, and that's the way they establish who it is.

What you can do tonight is leave them separated until you can figure out a different living arrangement. You may need two pens, each with two pigs. Or you may wind up with four solo pigs, none of which will live with another pig. That's always a risk you take when you try to put pigs together, particularly males. And it's something you could have avoided by going to a reputable rescue -- they would never have given you four males to house together without making sure that the pigs were compatible.

You can make a cubes and coroplast (C&C) cage pretty cheaply. Sometimes you can get the cube grids free, or for not much money, from places like Craigslist or Kijiji. Campaign signs are made of coroplast, and you can sometimes find them for free. The main page of this site, and some threads in the Cages forum here have some additional information.

Here's some recommended reading for new guinea pig owners:

https://www.guineapigcages.com/forum/threads/113176-Information-for-new-guinea-pig-owners
https://www.guineapigcages.com/forum/threads/107827-What-NOT-to-do-for-your-guinea-pigs!

 

[chilli]

Thank you for what you've said. For now I'm just going to sleep on it and decide what I'm going to do. I can't separate them because I don't have anything to put them in and there is nowhere indoors to make a C&C cage. I'll see the vet when I can and get some advice from them. I'll see what I can do with my four pigs, maybe I will find a way to cage them separately because I'm not sure if I'd want to get rid of any