I was just wondering if someone with cavie experience could help out with a bit of advice. A friend of mine has just inherited 2 8 month old guinea pigs from her student daughter. They are both male and were purchased at the same time. It is unclear of they are related or not.

One of the cavies is much larger than the other one (almost twice the size) and is very dominent. Although they do not fight the larger one keeps humping the other one excessively. The smaller one obviously does not like this and keeps its rear end shielded by the hutch wall if possible . If you take the smaller cavie away the larger one will squeak until his companion is brought back.

My friend wants to know whether it would be enough just to put a separator in the hutch so they still had each others company or whether it would be better to re-home one of them? Any useful comments or suggestions greatly appreciated.

Bump bump

We have 2 little boy piggies about the same age as yours who do exactly the same thing. There's not the size difference that there is with your two though. They don't do it all the time & they get on well most of the time.

You could try a separator but would it not just "postpone" the problem as once you remove it, they will have the same dominance issues all over again. As long as they're not fighting, I'd just leave them to it. They may "grow out of it" once dominance is established.

boars are very strange things

they can get along fine for years, then just something like this - or violence can break out for seemingly no reason


the smaller one, is it's weight and body condition okay?
if so i'm tempted to just say persevere with them

however, if it is very stressed, it may be better to re home one of them, have the one you keep neutered and get him a wife

or place them in cages, side by side, so that they can still interact, but the barrier prevents the humping, stressful behaviour

Last resort, male GPs are neutered nowadays , I wouldn't leave them to it, they could start fighting next.

neutering in guineas doesn't as a rule stop the dominance problems though

it's mainly done so that guinea who don;t get on with other boars are able to be housed with sows without unwanted pregnancy

Just in case, does anyone have any contacts for re-homing piggies in the Cheshire/Warrington area? As I say my friend took the piggies away from her daughter who is a student and didn't have time to look after them fully. She may have no choice but to re-home as these were unexpected pets.

I will forward your suggestions to her regarding the dominence issue. Many thanks for your responses.

there is a list of guinea pig rehoming centres here
http://www.guineapigrehome.org.uk/gp/centres.asp

it looks like the best bet in the RSPCA unfortunately, as they are the only ones listed