Dominance Adolescent Dominance - Video

[zoenanai]

Have been watching my boys a lot this evening and noticed that their dominance behaviors have stepped up a bit. They are chasing each other, mounting, doing the highest nose thing, and I even heard some teeth chattering. Silas is the mainly black one with the wild patch of hair at his rear end and he has always seemed the more dominant of the two. Connor usually backs down. Silas is the only one doing the teeth chattering, but Connor still runs up to him and does the rumble-strut. Here's a short video. I got a few more videos, but YouTube is taking too long to upload.

[video=youtube_share;fM43Ip2mrfg]http://youtu.be/fM43Ip2mrfg[/video]

They are between 3-4 months old. How long does this usually go on before they settle on who is dominant? I'm watching closely for no real biting. There was what looked like a quick nip earlier but I couldn't be sure because they ran up to each other quickly.

 

[jacqueline]

i've been told adolecence can last 1- 1 1/2 years. what's on the video almost looks playful, and certainly not severe. i would suggest removing any hideys that only have one entrance/exit so no pig feels cornered. i have 1 more hidey than i have pigs in each cage. also make sure you have 2 bowls for food and 2 water bottle, so there's no fighting over that. on their crankiest days, i've had to leave 2 piles of hay in separate corners. it's annoying, but as i said in a previous post, at least they don't stay out late, go to keggers, and get behind the wheel of the family car. lol

 

[zoenanai]

I actually thought about carving another hole into that house so there's another way out. The main reason I leave it in the cage is because they LOVE to chew on it. Silas is a huge chewer and that's one of his favorite things. They have a couple cozy sacks you can't really see in the video and another water bottle down below to the right. I will definitely get a second area for hay and food to keep them at ease. I thought they were all playful running around also until I heard/saw alot of rumble strutting and then teeth chattering coming from Silas. Made me a little nervous.

 

[foggycreekcavy]

Either carve another hole, or take it out. Right now it creates a dangerous situation, where a pig can get trapped and bitten. Maybe put in some cardboard tubes they can chew on and run through.

Cozy sacks may be another place they can get trapped, depending on how large the sacks are.

I always worry about 1x2 lofts when pigs are going through dominance issues--pigs trying to get away from others can actually scale grids and fall out. You might want to put something over the top of the loft temporarily until they get over this stage.

 

[azpiggies]

I was looking for something on this topic. Last weekend we adopted 2 6 mo old brothers from a local Piggy rescue. They have been living together for sometime and were recommended as a good pair for our daughters. They handle fine, not thrilled with being picked up but are a dream in their cuddle cups. For the past 2 days one has been chasing the other, attempts mounting, chattering and making the other very skittish. Tonight it sounded like the non-dominant, Teddy, was whining. I was wondering if since they have a new cage do they need to reestablish dominance? It continued outside while we had them in the grass for some playpen time too. We have them in a 2x4 c&c with 2 pigloos and 2 tubes. Any advice is appreciated...