Excessive humping behaviour?

[Joanne]

I recently rescued a lovely little boy named Hatch that was destined for snake food.
He is now a very healthy and lively teenager, and I am doing intros with my big group. I have 9 other rats, 4 oldies and 5 younger ones. They are all spayed/neutered.
Hatch will run around and try and mate with them. It's mostly the older females, although he did mount the males a couple of times. He also insists on sticking his nose WAY up everyone's butt.
Is this just little boy excitement that will calm down when he joins the group? Or is this humping behaviour part of his personality?
I am heistant to have him neutered (worried about the surgery and losing him) but if he will be mounting my older rats and annoying them all the time, then I will have to bite the bullet and get it done.

 

[lilspaz68]

he's pretty young is he not? Thomas who is 4-5 months old is still doing this...silly baby boy hijinks...

 

[jorats]

Yep, being a silly young boy. Although I do believe it's part of his personality, he should out grow this once he's comfortable in his place within the colony.

 

[hopefloats]

I have found they do outgrow it, but if they are introduced to other rats, that seems to shine through. Bart humped every boy rat he ever met, till loki had enough and pinned him. My crazy girl pika, humped the girls like mad when I first did her intros. That is my first and only female mounting experience. some of my boys tolerated it well for the first few days..but I will say it caused a lot of fights with the boys.

 

[SQ]

He also insists on sticking his nose WAY up everyone's butt.

I have rats that do that to new rats ... once they get used to the other rats it stops

 

[Joanne]

OK, I won't be too worried about it then. I am guessing he's around 10(?) weeks old, just from his size. He had a boxing match tonight with one of the boys, so I guess we'll be doing intros for a while longer.

 

[SQ]

all the best with the intros