Intros

[jorats]

It's hard to tell. With your lack of experience with rats and intros, I'm more incline to tell you that perhaps you should wait it out. If not done properly you could really stress out your old guy. But if you are ok with having a second cage and taking on two younger boys then you could try it.

 

[dan2333]

I got an extra cage and acquired two baby male rats from someone in Hamilton.

She said they were 7 weeks old.

I read a post on this thread that they wait until the rats are two months old before introducing to an adult rat.

My older rat is 2.5 years old. He's pretty friendly but I am still worried about introducing.

I'll post some pictures on my blog soon.

 

[jorats]

You really should wait another couple of weeks anyway for some type of quarantine. You don't want these babies giving anything to your old manrat.

 

[dan2333]

I quarantined them. I read a whole bunch of articles on it.

 

[jorats]

That's great. Most people don't, they don't realize how important it is.

I quarantined them. I read a whole bunch of articles on it.

 

[coreline]

ok! hoping this is the right spot to ask, since it is about intros hehe.

so, Daisy is doing well. her eye bulge and head tilt are not gone, but ever since being switched to baytril she no longer rolls. she does very little falling now and is probably ready to be re-introed to everyone. she has been apart from her regular group for almost 3 weeks now due to her inability to handle the RUUD and Hazel causing fusses. they have had play time together, but not living in the cage has resulted in Hazel causing trouble. Blue, the alpha has been fine though. no biting, she just goes still when Daisy pounces on her. it's kind of like when she crawls under the other girls to get groomed. she goes as stiff as a statue and waits. that's what she does when Daisy pounces lol.

anyhow! my actual question/advice needed. Mason is alone and still being rejected by the main girls Blue and Mini. I'm wondering how potentially stressful to Daisy it might be to intro her to Mason rather than back to her group of girls. how much of an impact can that have?

my intention being that if she gets along with Mason, they'd live together while I try to intro them both to the rest of the girls. that way neither of them would be alone. and as much as I hate the r-690 Mason lives in, the cage would be much more appropriate for Daisy right now. the narrowness of it reduces her ability to fall very far and he has fleece on all levels since he's decided carefress is delicious.

/end ramble

 

[jorats]

That sounds like a really good plan. Go for it!

 

[coreline]

ok, so Mason and Daisy had their first sort of intro today. I say sort of because it took Daisy 10 minutes to get too worked up and I had to end it to rethink where to intro them.

(and by worked up, I mean she was more interested in crawling on me than hanging out in the intro space lol. I couldn't put her down without her trying to climb back up to my shoulders.)

Daisy has always been more of a people rat than a "hang out with the other rats" kind of rat. she's more likely to run to a person than another rat, is what I mean. so I'm not sure whether to be worried or not about how little she payed attention to Mason. she did give his mouth, belly, and rear a few sniffs through out the time period. but she was nowhere near as interested as Mason was. he was so excited, he had no idea what to do. he followed her around sniffing, pounced on her once (just a light playish pounce. he's socially awkward lol), and tried to get some grooming going. she mostly ignored him, save for a few instances where she returned the sniffing.

is this good or bad? good because there was no squeaking or biting. but bad because I worry about her lack of interest. Blue had the same issue. she had a general lack of interest in Mason. then moved on to grooming him, but once in a place where she considered it her territory, she bit him.

 

[jorats]

This was good. Some females will also play hard to get and that might be her ploy here.
Why not have Mason on you as well when Daisy is. Let them interact on you.

 

[coreline]

that's the next step

I'm taking it super slow, since Mason has become a little bit ratty socially awkward lol. but I think tonight I'll find somewhere I can sit down, so they can both crawl to their content. Daisy takes a little extra focus when she's on my shoulders since she still has balance issues to some extent from her head tilt. if I'm sitting down, it'd be much easier to handle the two.

 

[coreline]

I've probably asked this before, but is grooming from above ALWAYS a bad sign? or is it situational?

Mason and Daisy had their first hour + long intro today and it mostly went well. she's still a bit aloof with him, but does not squeak at all when he grooms her or tries to awkwardly play. he has started pinning her from above to groom her back, neck, chin and ears (not the ears themselves, but around them). she doesn't squeak at all, just holds still. is this a bad sign on his part?

I know my girl alpha, Blue, grooms from above on ALL the rats. even the ones she's closest to. so with her, I attribute it to a combo of her being the alpha and how she grooms.

Mason is harder to read, as he's a bit socially awkward with other rats.

 

[jorats]

It's not a bad thing. Alphas do that only to show their position. I'd say it's working out pretty good.

 

[coreline]

yay! :joy:

she's still fairly aloof with him, but doesn't really show any signs of having a problem with him. she's a ton more calm with him than Mini (one of the girls that bit him) ever was in a neutral play area. it'll be interesting to see how she ends up responding in a non neutral area.

 

[coreline]

intros have been going well! Daisy even will flip Mason if he's sniffing her too much lol. she's 100g less than him, it's pretty cute since it's not out of malice

they're at the point where I've switched cages! they've been switched for 24 hours. in the past, my intros have been so smooth that 24 - 48 hours has been long enough for this stage. how long would you recommend in general though?

 

[jorats]

For me, I usually always do a week and then they move in if all goes well.

 

[coreline]

Daisy and Mason are almost at their one week it's funny because they pounce on each other and even throw out a kick sometimes, but it never seems aggressive. there's rarely any squeaking (and that is usually only when there's too much power grooming), there's never been any puffing, no biting, no screaming, etc. I think they're just too energetic young things lol.

ok, I thought I'd toss this question in here. I'm debating getting one of the rats from that Idaho rescue and introing to my RUUD group. they have a lot of boys that need homes, but I worry about size difference. I have two girls that are pretty small (Daisy and Mini are both 201g and under. Mini is in the RUUD group and is 195g. the rest are average and range from 250 - 275g). Mason, who Mini and Blue have so far rejected, is only around 300g. give or take 5g. his body frame is not much bigger than his mother, the largest girl in the group. so he's fairly small for a boy.

so I guess my question is, at what point would you worry about size differences in rats you were introing?

 

[jorats]

There really isn't any worry at all. I had small girl bully the boys in their cage. The small ones know how to make their stand.

 

[coreline]

that is good to know! that makes me feel better. I've never had such tiny rats, so the issue of size hasn't come up much for me before.

scratch Daisy and Mason's perfect record though! they just had their first wrestling match that ended in Daisy protesting pretty loudly (not screaming, but louder than a regular squeak). of course they bounced back and ganged up on me to groom me. never underestimate the power of a 200g girl rat who wants to groom inside your ear

 

[jorats]

Are your girls intact? Intact girls go into heat and can get them moody, especially if there's a male around and he just won't do the deed. lol

 

[coreline]

yeah, all of my girls except for Blue (the alpha) are intact. that could easily explain it. Daisy is a bit of feisty thing in the first place. she wants her way and has loads of energy. she's been getting Mason wound up a lot lol. they bounce around at top speed before ending up in a mega wrestling match. she was a bit more amped up than normal today, so very likely she might be in heat and got into a bigger wrestling match than usual.