Or guinea pigs really hate each other

[NCTDN]

Posted a while back. Gp5 lost his older buddy in November so we got him a baby boat. He doted on him. That was then.
Now gp6 is a teenager. They fight. Constantly. They're better outside when they are occupied with eating grass but there's a constant rumbling from gp5. Now they are both teeth chattering. I made the fateful mistake of putting my hand in and got bitten. They pounce at each other and knock things like food bowls flying.
There was an incident a while back where gp6 had his ear bitten and I thought that they settled after that, but now the fighting is back. I'm quite surprised as sitting here they've gone quiet - think they've worn themselves out! We've removed shelters to try and stop them being territorial but what else can we do? We don't have the space for two cages or hutches.

Probably not what you want to hear but we had to rehome one of ours for this reason and then we neutered the other one and got some girly guinea pigs for companions for him. Two boars can’t always live together happily despite what people say, they are very territorial.

Gp6 is 7 months old now btw. I hoped the teenage years had passed!

I don't think we could afford to have them neutered tbh unless it was a guarantee that fighting would stop. How would I choose which one to rehome?

I’d separate them , if that means one has to go then so be it . My sister had 2 like that ended up with one of them having a really nasty abscess that took many weeks and hundreds in vets bills to sort out . They had room to put them in adjoining cages so they could still talk to each other just not fight .

I mean this kindly OP, but is it really responsible to own pets if you can't afford reasonable medical care for them, including neutering, when required?

Last in first out of course .

Not sure if any of this is transferable but our 2 male pigs are now coming up 2 years old. They have fought quite a bit but have been much happier with each other for the last 6 months or so, even sharing a shelter for a snooze some days. When they were younger they had bad days and good days and spent a lot of time apart, one upstairs and one downstairs in the hutch, swapping every hour or so - they are now happy to be on the same floor together for whole afternoons/ evenings. We never removed shelters as our pigs love them, but best to get arches, with openings both ends so 1 pig can’t get stuck in the shelter. And a water bottle and loads of hay/nuggets on each level of the hutch, so the dominant one can’t bully the other one away from the food. They definitely need to be able to get away from each other. I was worried we would have to separate them when they were younger but now feel much more confident that they can stay together. Plus I always feed / cuddle / move / anything the dominant pig first, otherwise he gets cross. And I make sure they always get given equal amounts of treats, they need to finish the treat at the same time or the dominant one will steal the other’s treat, which leads to fighting, or a lot of rumbling and nosing off at the very least. Actually ours tend to go no further than a nose off nowadays, which is great.

That's really reassuring to hear @MilkRunningOutAgain. There's two of everything but maybe we need to try shelters again and see if they are better. We've got 2 open tunnel ones. They sounds similar that when one is upstairs, the other is down.
We can afford vets bills - that wasn't phrased very well - but hard to justify with an unknown outcome. Had this with gp3, spent a fortune and he didn't survive anyway.

When my sister got her 2 boar babies earlier this year she put in 2 water bottles / 2 bowls etc in different places so they don’t have to fight about that .