[hydenluvmimi]

Hi! At the time im writing this, I don't have any rats, or even the cage. I already have a cage and the rats picked out though, and have been researching for a few weeks (Don't worry! I will have the cage setup BEFORE I bring my rats home.)
At my pet store, there is this hairless rat I really badly would like to adopt... the thing is, he's kept alone. The other furry rats live together, and there's about 4 of them. They're all males. I was wondering if it'd be okay to introduce the hairless male to a furry male, and how I should go about doing it. I know all the methods, but they all seem targeted to older rats being introduced to younger rats. Should the cage be considered a neutral space since neither of the rats have ever been in it? Or should I just put them in there together and not worry about it too much?
Definitely need some advice!!!!!!! 😅

 

[Audrey wood]

Hi! At the time im writing this, I don't have any rats, or even the cage. I already have a cage and the rats picked out though, and have been researching for a few weeks (Don't worry! I will have the cage setup BEFORE I bring my rats home.)
At my pet store, there is this hairless rat I really badly would like to adopt... the thing is, he's kept alone. The other furry rats live together, and there's about 4 of them. They're all males. I was wondering if it'd be okay to introduce the hairless male to a furry male, and how I should go about doing it. I know all the methods, but they all seem targeted to older rats being introduced to younger rats. Should the cage be considered a neutral space since neither of the rats have ever been in it? Or should I just put them in there together and not worry about it too much?
Definitely need some advice!!!!!!! 😅

I wouldn't buy the pet store rats if I were you. I have 2 rats that came from a pet store. one got a tumor and both both have really bad genetics, and as tempting as it is to buy them, it's not that great to give them your money as they will prolly use it to buy mass bred animals in bad condition.

 

[CorbinDallasMyMan]

In general, cages don't make good introduction spaces because you can't really intervene if a fight breaks out. Fights often break out when one rat tries to run away from another one. They can't run away from each other in a small space so the "carrier method" of introductions can be okay but a full sized cage would be more dangerous. I would not recommend putting new rats into a cage together until they've been carefully introduced and are getting along very well.

 

[BundleORats]

I agree with the others, you should not be getting pet store rats, but if you end up doing so, here are intro tips.

I don’t know anything about male rats, but as a female owner one of the mose nerve racking things for me is intros, but generally my girls are very open to meeting new rats, and they especially love babies. I usually use the carrier method, but there are three main methods.

The glove method.
The carrier method.
and
The neutral territory method.
Look into each of them and figure out a method that works for you.