[Gpdd] CARE: Boar Pairing

pat schuett bunzella at yahoo.ca
Mon Feb 1 13:25:21 EST 2016


Hi Cindy,
I am far from an experienced boar pairer, but my feeling is that pigsonality is probably the most important criteria to consider.
I did try to get my two boars Floyd and Horatio together a while back, and they were exactly the combination you describe --- Floyd was about three at the time, while Horatio was under a year.  The problem was that Floyd is a calm, peaceable guy, while Horatio was and is hyper and full of himself.  Things seemed to go very well for the first week of so they were together, then fights began to break out, invariably caused by Horatio trying to mount Floyd.  (Floyd was much larger than Horatio at the time and this behavior made no sense to anyone but Horatio.)At first, Floyd would just take offense, chase Horatio away and go back to what he was doing, but Horatio did not have the sense to give up his plan for world domination and the fights began to escalate to the point where I was nervous about leaving them alone together if I was not somewhere close by to intervene.  (There was never any actual bloodshed, but the tooth-rattling got louder and longer all the time.)
I probably would have persisted longer if I felt more confident about reading boar body language and had some experience in determining whether there was still potential for them to sort out their differences, but in the end, it was just easier (and seemed safer) to separate them.  Ever since then, they have lived in side by side cages and spend much of their time lying companionably on either side of the adjoining cage wall.  In recent months, Horatio has had bladder stone surgery and lots of vet visits, and Floyd always seems anxious when Horatio is away even for a few hours and rushes over to greet him at the bars when he gets back.  They do seem to have a friendship of sorts, as long as the cage bars are between them, but Floyd is still the same sweet, easy-going pig he always was and Horatio is still the same little jerk, so maybe they were just not a good match to begin with.
I will be interested to hear what our experienced boar matchers say.  Does pigsonality matter as much as I think, or could they still have sorted it out amicably between them if I had just stuck with it longer?  
Pat and the Prairie Pigs



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