Fighting boars Should I give up?
Sigh......it's been a long few days. My guy Vinni was a lone pig, but I found him an adorable Coronet "brother." Had them separated about a week and built a nice big 2x4 C&C cage and was so excited. Read tons and tons of websites about intro's and watched countless Youtube vids about it. Put them together in a big expen for dogs, set it up just like I was told. The intro period was about 4 hours. Vinni was definitely the top pig, mounting and chattering and all that big boy stuff. The new guy is a bit smaller. I figured Vinni would be dominant - he's big and brave. The new pig seemed submissive - he's scared and flighty and in the group he came from he was the last allowed to eat. So they finally settled down, laid near each other, ate together, etc. Still rumblestrutting and chattering some but long breaks in between. They were introduced to the nice new cage, everything was ok. Still not 100% peace but it was tolerable. It lessened through the night, and all was quiet. They were fine. Today all was okay again. Eating, etc.
I got home after being out about 2 hours and went to check on them. Filled their food bowls and they happily were eating. I was shocked to see them eating out of the same bowl. Then the new one lifted his nose up and Vinni left the food area. I was surprised. After that, all hell broke loose. Then we were doing some work on the cage lid, so lots of stress and noise, which maybe inspired these fights?? The new one is now NOT backing down. He seems annoyed from being humped to death but not sure if that's the case. He started the chattering a few times and was smelling Vinni's behind now. No humping from anyone, just noise and Vinni doing a yawn (which he's done quite a few times and they just walk away afterwards). I decided to do a bath, made it long and drawn out and kept them in the towel together and blow dried them together. All was well, cuddling and huddling together. No noise or anything. Put back in cage and here we go again. Well after a while it escalated and we had a full on ball of fury. Separated and see Vinni's ear is split and the new one has a little blood spot on his cheek. UGH. Cleaned them up and separated the cage into 2 parts. They can still see/smell each other but can't hurt each other. UGH.....I'm so disappointed. I knew this could happen, but they were doing SO well. We've lost all the progress they made. Everything I've read says it's okay until blood is drawn. This was the first time. They just won't settle now. Even being separated there is a lot of noise and rumblestrutting by Vinni only.
The only change I can think of is when we started messing with the cage lid (fixing it some) we took the hide houses OUT. Maybe since the new one had nowhere to hide, he felt stressed and started all this? It seems WITH the houses they were doing much better. Help! What do I do? Leave them separated like this for a few days? So upset
PLEASE no negative comments......I've done everything *right* from what I've read. I know it just sometimes doesn't work out. Any ideas or encouragement is much appreciated.
(above 2 are the cage situation right now, separated. please excuse the mess, I'm so stressed I just snapped the pics to show and ask what to do)
(these are from the intro day in the expen)
(from intro day in expen)