# Rat Introduction.. what even..



## haunt (Sep 9, 2012)

SO I brought home this beautiful blue blazed boy the other day when I got my critter nation.
Been working on introductions.. right now he's in a considerably smaller cage than the cn.. but I have him right next to the top shelf so he can smell and interact with my other two boys.. I've been wondering about some behaviour he's been exhibiting though. When my older boys come up to see him in his cage he makes this weird fast huffing/heavy breathing noise at them (i can probably get a video if need be.. it happens often enough)

Is this an aggressive behaviour towards their approach? 

I've tried putting them in neutral places together a couple times now.. my bed.. the bathtub etc.. but everytime the blue puffs up instantly and does those agressive little buttscoots and starts crawling all over my boys. My oldest male, Dass, is so calm, and he's absolutely PETRIFIED by what's been going on when they meet. he freezes when the blue gets near him, and literally craps himself.. never fights back or runs or anything... My younger boy, elrond, tries to run from the blue.. and has been bitten pretty bad. he's terrified of the blue too.. even in the CN when he goes to sniff the blue through the bars, he only stays there for a second or two before the blue starts huffing at him and he runs downstairs and hides where he can't be seen.

The breeder I got the blue from had him living with four other males.. and he's absolutely fantastic when it's 1 on 1 time with a person, but throw a rat into that mix and he becomes a defensive little demon.

In a few days, im going to switch the cages they're in so they're forced around eachothers scent some more.. are there any other suggestions or do I just need to keep at it? I just feel bad that my older boys are so terrified.


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## ratclaws (Nov 11, 2012)

Sounds like you need to take this introduction step-by-step, a little at a time. Your new rat is showing surefire signs of introduction aggression and if he's bitten this will need a lot of work. It could take up to a month to intro them. How old are your current rats and how old is he? Make sure everyone is at least 3 months old before trying an intro again. Biting and the huffing sounds are pretty much signs saying "get away from me or I will eventually kill you!". You may have to let them fight it out eventually but blood being drawn is NOT what you are wanting.

I'd suggest keeping them near to each other a bit longer and then trying cage/bedding swaps. However, it can be very difficult to get rats together that are fighting so intensely and biting one another. As an example, my oldest girl Storm exhibits a lot of alpha behaviour and she can't be put with my youngest 2 girls Ellie and Lily, because she acts like this and bites (she bit Ellie when Ellie was just 6 weeks old). Just the other night, we put my girlfriend's oldest girl Bella on the bed with my girls Ellie, Rosie and Lily and she turned super aggressive, despite knowing them and being introed to them a month before. She exhibited the same behaviours as your new blue boy and actually bit Rosie pretty deep - she penetrated her under layer of skin and bit into her innards near her leg a bit! So just be VERY careful during these intros.


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## haunt (Sep 9, 2012)

Dass is 2 years old, and Elrond is 5 or 6 months.
The new boy, which I suppose I'll just call "blue" for now since he doesn't have a name yet, is 8 months old.

Unfortunately, in neutral territory before, Blue was wrestling with Elrond and I let it happen because they were just doing typical dominance things, and I thought they would chill. But it escalated, and before I was able to intervene, Blue had gotten Elrond pretty bad above his hind quarters. FORTUNATELY, I've had something like this happen a while back with one of my older girls (who is now deceased) I have a picture of her wound here, and it is very similar in nature to what happened to Elrond. But because I've seen this kind of injury before, I didn't panic too much and immediately separated them. I tended to Elrond's wounds, put a very small amount of neosporin on it, and now, almost 3 days later, it's almost completely gone and it hasn't given him any trouble.










I figured after this whole encounter, introducing was going to take longer than most.. and I am still hoping for the best if I am patient and continue working with them, they will eventually get along. I'm having my doubts, but I'm really hoping this will work out longterm. Blue is a beautiful and friendly rat as long as he's on his own.. and I know he's been with other males successfully before. The main reason I decided to start introducing a new rat into the pack was because unfortunately Dass is getting old.. I don't expect him to make it another year, and I didn't want Elrond to end up alone. Their ages are much more similar so I thought it would be for the best.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

I've never seen any benefit to wasting time with letting rats get to hate each other before introducing them. 

I recommend doing an immersion with your new rat so he is part of your pack and accepts your leadership... I'm assuming you are already the alpha among your other rats then doing an immersion introduction and getting it over with. 

I'm not sure there is really any scientific evidence that supports the idea that rats get used to the scent of an invader. Rats get jumped into a pack by the alpha. It happens pretty much the day they meet and it's all over within a few hours. Rats don't stalk each other's packs waiting for an invitation and they certainly aren't allowed to hang around the pack until they have joined and been approved by the alpha. As everyone's alpha you can facilitate the introductions and won't get bit managing the introductions from the middle of the fray. See the sticky on immersion for more details.

Best luck


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## haunt (Sep 9, 2012)

Thanks Rat Daddy.. I've already been working with immersion, and he's fine around me and seems to accept me.. just loses his mind around the other boys. I'll definitely keep at it. I'm not ready to give up yet.. and should I find myself giving up in the future, the breeder said they would take him back at least, but that's definitely a very last resort.


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## ratclaws (Nov 11, 2012)

I think it's a good idea to do an Immersion introduction, but when it's rats biting like this it's best to break it up over a while or you can quickly end up with a mess. I'm not sure if you've had to deal with aggressive introductions Rat Daddy because your rats have always been well-adjusted from the get go, but they're horrible. Bites happen in an instant, even during what seems like harmless grooming and they can come from even the calmest of rats. Take my girlfriend's oldest girl Bella for example - she's the perfect pet rat, knows her place etc. But just 2 days ago she bit my girl Rosie when she was introduced to her again after not being near her for a good month in an instant, literally 2 seconds. I think Immersion is lacking with these kinds of cases and they need special treatment.

Bella bit through Rosie's skin and actually pierced into her innards, the worst bite I've seen from the rats and she's the nicest rat we have out of our 8 (other than the boy Max). When rats go into intro aggressive mode they certainly switch to their wild side and it's so hard to control. It's not worth even trying to keep such an aggressive rat in with other tame, harmless rats when they are put in such danger, believe me. They find it hard to fight back and then things like this happen.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

Ratclaws,

I introduced Fuzzy Rat to my part wild when she came home after being outdoors and on her own for 5 months. They had never met. But I raised both as pups. And after tearing up my neighbor's hand I knew our part wild had serious aggression issues and Fuzzy Rat was large and very strong back then and 50% larger than our wild child.

I reclined on my easy chair and put both on my stomach and put my hands in between and basically swatted the rats apart or kept them separate until they tired themselves out. I ended up with untold pairs of tiny holes in my hands that itched for a while but neither rat drew blood or bit hard enough to cause me any discomfort... After a while they both got the message and I squished them into a little ball and carried them back to the cage and plunked them in. 

I'll not lie, Fuzzy Rat over groomed our wild child who amazingly put up with the abuse until Fuzzy rat actually bit her hind quarters... There were only two marks on Fuzzy Rat ever... One single pair of neat incisions... one deep and very precise hole on either side of her trachea. That pretty much ended the fighting. Fuzzy Rat has always been stubborn and really mistook our wild girls lack of aggression for weakness. The fact is that she was playing nice in deference to me, she could have easily killed Fuzzy Rat at any moment of her choosing. The only reason Fuzzy Rat is alive today is that no matter how stone cold and lethal our part wild rat was, I was her alpha and she understood that no matter how annoying and pushy Fuzzy Rat was being she was part of her pack and not to be killed. Just because my wild child was well-adjusted didn't mean she wasn't hot tempered and surprisingly lethal.

I can't even imagine the restraint it took to let herself be power groomed to the point of having a nearly bare spot. And the self control it took not to bite down and rip Fuzzy Rat's trachea out. I'm pretty much betting very few people ever have raised a more dangerous, vicious and stone cold rat. But she was our little girl first and she loved when we hugged her and skritched her and held her. My daughter and I were her alphas and I never had a rat that ever responded to commands faster or more consistently than that rat. Sure we had to always speak softly around her and handle her with care, but to her, pack bond was everything. That's how a properly immersed rat should behave, even if she or he is otherwise a stone cold killer. She's been gone for over a year and still few cats will venture into my back yard. If this rat did not like you she didn't care how big you are, you were going to feel serious pain and she ripped meat with every bite and even when play fighting with me when she was only a pup, she could jump into my face from my desk and lay several mock bites on me before I could swat her off. So yes, I've worked with a seriously vicious rat, and respectfully submitted, temperament aside, the immersion introduction worked very quickly and efficiently with her because of the pack bond and my alpha status. Fuzzy Rats problem was that our wild child wasn't fighting back so she just kept pushing her luck until it nearly ran out; another normal domestic rat would have defended herself earlier on and it never would have come to injuries. 

Assuming you were to try to introduce my part wild rat to any group of rats without immersion introductions, as in cage swap and letting them figure it out themselves, she would have pretty much killed every other rat in the cage in minutes. I add the footnote that she was outdoors with other wild rats for 5 months and didn't come back pregnant. So when you think nasty rat, think rat so vicious that other wild rats wouldn't play with her.

Now I really felt comfortable with both rats and I really believed neither would bite me before I tried something as insane sounding as doing introductions between two very agile and strong adult rats on my stomach with my bare hands in between. But I can assure you it worked. On the other hand if you aren't the undisputed alpha in the easy chair, I'm pretty sure you shouldn't try this at home. And I only took the easy chair approach because I knew how fast and lethal the part wild rat was and I knew I'd never get between them fast enough otherwise. I actually tried the "old fashioned" method of introductions for a few days and I noticed that the girls were getting more hostile towards each other not friendlier. And knowing that one rat can kill the other in a blink of an eye, I pretty much decided ever introducing them into the same cage so they could fight on their own was out of the question so I went for an immersion introduction based on my theory of both rats accepting each other based on my alpha status as the hands on referee and introducer. 

I usually don't cite this example as my first attempt at an immersion introduction because it wasn't 100% successful as the rats still had a few nasty fights several weeks afterwards and especially because one of the rats wasn't domestic. But since you brought it up, I can pretty much say that the pack bond and the human alpha status will improve the chances of a successful introduction between any two properly immersed rats. Once the alpha accepts the new rat and does the appropriate introductions the rest of the pack follows. Most introductions that go badly go wrong because some of the rats belong to your pack while the other rats don't and members of different packs with different loyalties can't cohabit in the same cage.

One final word of caution... wild rats and part wild rats are pretty much one owner pets, or rather one pack pets. They are hostile and aggressive towards anyone or anything that isn't properly introduced and approved by their alpha. Immersion will work with part wild and wild rats BUT once they are more than a few weeks old they are way to fast and agile to safely handle, so unless you are insane your most likely shouldn't try it. Never try to grab a wild rat! It will hurt you in more places and ways than you can imagine. Having had one, I might adopt another, they are very special animals, but only if it were handled from birth like our first one was. Even the friendliest part wild or wild type rat is an insurance liability and likely a "pet" most rat owners should steer well clear of.


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