I've been intro'ing the new little ones, Brenna and Smidge, to the residents, Hope, Paige, Cookie, and Evie
we did many sessions on my bed, and when those went well, I moved them to the rat room but stupidly left the cage in the room and let them go in and out of it, which of course, caused quite a bit of fur to fly :emb:
so now I'm dragging the cage out of the room & removing most of the things they can get into where I"d have a hard time getting to them if a fight broke out inside. I flip all of their box huts over so I can easily see where everyone is, and remove the small tunnels, and other small enclosures. They still have fleece scrap piles they can get into but they spend more time running around than burrowing. I remove all loose food like stashed lab blocks and other treats they may have stashed around the room so there's no fights over those :roll: :lol:
I usually give them a nice plate of something tasty but Brenna and Smidge most of often ignore it and run off to play, so now I am letting them run around a bit, taking them back out of the room, and THEN bringing everyone in with the food, in an attempt to get them to all eat from the same plate at the same time.
Doesn't always work, the little girls are not at all food motivated, it seems :roll: :lol:
but my older girls ARE! they'll ignore almost anything to get to FOOD :laugh4:
so far it's gone well. :dance:
Brenna was in heat one of these times and kept jumping and humping everyone, which got her chased a bit and there were a few stand offs but nothing too bad. She's able to out run Hope, and also jump higher and faster than Hope so she was never caught
I'm not sure if I should let Hope chase her like that, so long as she never catches her... what do you think?
There have been a few times when Hope got really puffed up and tried to go after both Smidge and Brenna, and Cookie, Paige and Evie actually seemed to intervene?
they came running over to where the fight was breaking out and got between the baby girls and Hope. Paige did a bit of boxing with Hope, and Cookie climbed over one of the babies.
The baby girls go from standing up to Hope, to running away from her, to crouching and/or freezing in place. Smidge's reaction is to freeze in place or crouch down and let Hope walk over her and sniff her- this seems to please Hope.
both baby girls do come back to Hope later on, to either face off with her, or try to mount her, or groom her, or sit beside her!
it's the weirdest thing. I have no idea what their rules are, but they seem to have a some system and there are times when Hope will let them be, and other times that she just seems to get outraged at what they are doing.
It mostly seems to be that she does not like them running around freely- like they have to check in with her before they go somewhere? is that possible? also seems to tick her off if they are "running in the house" :lol:
I know I always yelled at my daughter "no running in the house" and I swear Hope is trying to tell them the same thing.
There are other times when it appears that Hope has caught their scent on something, or the scent of something, don't know what, but she is clearly smelling something, and that will get her riled up and she will actually go looking for the little ones, more often Brenna than Smidge.
Smidge seems to have made peace with Hope except for if she runs around, most of the rest of the time, Hope and her can sit side by side, groom each other, etc with out any issues
But Brenna is a little spit fire and seems to be challenging Hope's alpha status.
interestingly Paige did the same at one point- after a tense stand off with both babies and Hope,
Paige came over and got into it with Hope, in a much less intense way but it was still quite a boxing match that ended with both of them flipping each other but the girl left being power groomed was Paige
Paige went off after that, happy as a clam. She is one funny girl!
So, what do you think?
the only thing I"m nervous about, really, is Hope chasing the girls with her fur all puffed up like she's ready to kill them.
Should I be intervening at all? a couple of times I was able to distract Hope, which makes me think SHE was in heat at the time and driven by hormones and not a true desire to put the babies in their place
a couple of other times, I was able to soothe her by stoking her back with a towel (just in case) and she instead came to me for a few minutes, climbed up on my shoulder to survey her territory, spotted the babies and then went off about her business
one of those time she saw Brenna and got upset and went after her, but Brenna outran her.
Brenna runs in circles to get away and one time she doubled back and ended up running straight at Hope- OMG that was so funny! Hope's eyes got HUGE
Brenna leaped straight up in the air as soon as she saw her, and took off running even faster, then made her most spectacular jump to date, right up into the window sill. Poor Hope she can't jump that high or run that fast.
these girls are so much fun!
ok so any suggestions on how many more play sessions before I move up to the big cage clean out and putting them all together?
OH our play sessions are now at least 2 hrs long.
:wink2:
we did many sessions on my bed, and when those went well, I moved them to the rat room but stupidly left the cage in the room and let them go in and out of it, which of course, caused quite a bit of fur to fly :emb:
so now I'm dragging the cage out of the room & removing most of the things they can get into where I"d have a hard time getting to them if a fight broke out inside. I flip all of their box huts over so I can easily see where everyone is, and remove the small tunnels, and other small enclosures. They still have fleece scrap piles they can get into but they spend more time running around than burrowing. I remove all loose food like stashed lab blocks and other treats they may have stashed around the room so there's no fights over those :roll: :lol:
I usually give them a nice plate of something tasty but Brenna and Smidge most of often ignore it and run off to play, so now I am letting them run around a bit, taking them back out of the room, and THEN bringing everyone in with the food, in an attempt to get them to all eat from the same plate at the same time.
Doesn't always work, the little girls are not at all food motivated, it seems :roll: :lol:
but my older girls ARE! they'll ignore almost anything to get to FOOD :laugh4:
so far it's gone well. :dance:
Brenna was in heat one of these times and kept jumping and humping everyone, which got her chased a bit and there were a few stand offs but nothing too bad. She's able to out run Hope, and also jump higher and faster than Hope so she was never caught
I'm not sure if I should let Hope chase her like that, so long as she never catches her... what do you think?
There have been a few times when Hope got really puffed up and tried to go after both Smidge and Brenna, and Cookie, Paige and Evie actually seemed to intervene?
they came running over to where the fight was breaking out and got between the baby girls and Hope. Paige did a bit of boxing with Hope, and Cookie climbed over one of the babies.
The baby girls go from standing up to Hope, to running away from her, to crouching and/or freezing in place. Smidge's reaction is to freeze in place or crouch down and let Hope walk over her and sniff her- this seems to please Hope.
both baby girls do come back to Hope later on, to either face off with her, or try to mount her, or groom her, or sit beside her!
it's the weirdest thing. I have no idea what their rules are, but they seem to have a some system and there are times when Hope will let them be, and other times that she just seems to get outraged at what they are doing.
It mostly seems to be that she does not like them running around freely- like they have to check in with her before they go somewhere? is that possible? also seems to tick her off if they are "running in the house" :lol:
I know I always yelled at my daughter "no running in the house" and I swear Hope is trying to tell them the same thing.
There are other times when it appears that Hope has caught their scent on something, or the scent of something, don't know what, but she is clearly smelling something, and that will get her riled up and she will actually go looking for the little ones, more often Brenna than Smidge.
Smidge seems to have made peace with Hope except for if she runs around, most of the rest of the time, Hope and her can sit side by side, groom each other, etc with out any issues
But Brenna is a little spit fire and seems to be challenging Hope's alpha status.
interestingly Paige did the same at one point- after a tense stand off with both babies and Hope,
Paige came over and got into it with Hope, in a much less intense way but it was still quite a boxing match that ended with both of them flipping each other but the girl left being power groomed was Paige
Paige went off after that, happy as a clam. She is one funny girl!
So, what do you think?
the only thing I"m nervous about, really, is Hope chasing the girls with her fur all puffed up like she's ready to kill them.
Should I be intervening at all? a couple of times I was able to distract Hope, which makes me think SHE was in heat at the time and driven by hormones and not a true desire to put the babies in their place
a couple of other times, I was able to soothe her by stoking her back with a towel (just in case) and she instead came to me for a few minutes, climbed up on my shoulder to survey her territory, spotted the babies and then went off about her business
one of those time she saw Brenna and got upset and went after her, but Brenna outran her.
Brenna runs in circles to get away and one time she doubled back and ended up running straight at Hope- OMG that was so funny! Hope's eyes got HUGE
Brenna leaped straight up in the air as soon as she saw her, and took off running even faster, then made her most spectacular jump to date, right up into the window sill. Poor Hope she can't jump that high or run that fast.
these girls are so much fun!
ok so any suggestions on how many more play sessions before I move up to the big cage clean out and putting them all together?
OH our play sessions are now at least 2 hrs long.
:wink2:
