[wafflepeep]

in many of the websites it says that males become aggressive when they are 5-12 months old. can you still keep them together if the are in a large cage? has anyone had an experience with this? do they get into many fights and hurt each other? I didnt want to get does because I wanted one more laid back.

 

[twitch]

it should say that males MAY become aggressive when they are 5-12 months. essentially this is the teenage years and like humans teenagers are rampaging with hormones an it makes them act a little odd sometimes. also, they should have had a note on the word agressive itself. the type of agression does not mean that WILL be fights it just mean that they are more likely to happen now (just like human teenagers). it also does NOT mean that the fights WILL BE serious, again just that there will be more. a fight shouldn't be anymore serious then normal rat scufflings.

however, having said that there CAN be rats that get quite aggressive and will seriously fight (though not normally with other cage members that they have grown up with). if this happens a neuter will most often fix it but its not terribily common that it will progress this far.

so to answer your questions, yes, in most cases you can keep them together and in most cases they won't get into serious enough fights that could harm each other. but, if they are the odd ones that do neutering will more likely then not fix the problem.

 

[Stephanie]

all of my males have gotten aggressive at this time and i have tried reintroductions but to no avail after they are about 1 and a half they seem to be ok with each other outside of the cage but do not want to live together i have had to rush a couple of my boys to the emergency vet due to fights with each other (just the other night iriquois bled for forty five minutes) it is really tough having all boys and quite a commitment i have had to spend alot of money on seperate cages for them and i have tried all of the introductions i have come across and when i say aggressive i do not mean pulling out hair i mean three inch bite marks and scratches and going for the jugular aggression

 

[twitch]

all of my males have gotten aggressive at this time and i have tried reintroductions but to no avail after they are about 1 and a half they seem to be ok with each other outside of the cage but do not want to live together i have had to rush a couple of my boys to the emergency vet due to fights with each other (just the other night iriquois bled for forty five minutes) it is really tough having all boys and quite a commitment i have had to spend alot of money on seperate cages for them and i have tried all of the introductions i have come across and when i say aggressive i do not mean pulling out hair i mean three inch bite marks and scratches and going for the jugular aggression

that's really odd. it shouldn't be that common that all your rats have gone through this. how many rats do you have? or better, how many rats total have gone through this with you? where did you get your rats? how old were they when you got them? were they introduced before their teenage months? how long prior to their teenage months were they intro'ed? you said you tried RE-introing them afterwards, when did you decide to separate them? how old were tehy when you re-intro'ed? could they still have been hormonal? how long did you try one intro technique before you switched to a different one? what techniques did you use? i know that's a lot of questions but honestly it shouldn't be that common. males shouldn't have any more an incidence of needing to live on their own then females and their teenager months shouldn't persist for over 6-7 months on the outside. this just really strikes me as odd.

 

[Stephanie]

I have six rats three of them have gone through it though one of my past rats that I had to give back to the rescue i got him from (he tried to bite my son really bad) was the same way once they get out of the "I am bigger than you are" or teenage years they are fine together again i just reintroduced steve and iriquois (they got into it so bad iriquois bled for 45 minutes) Iriquois tried to kill sniffles, sniffles tried to kill both little man and steve. By saying kill i mean biting at their throats jackson has never gone through it but there have been some BAD fights and not just squeaking and hair pulling out but i mean three inch gouges and horrible bite marks

 

[Stephanie]

I have bought all of my rats from babies and i got two of them from breeders and a couple from other pet stores i seperate them when there is blood and i try re-intro at about a year and a half after they have calmed down and they have been next to each other i have also tried numerous times before that but always ending with blood. Sniffs is a loner rat and iriquois is blind adn jackson is just too old to care little man is too young and steve is at the teen age right now i have kept rats since i was a kid and this has pretty much been the norm for every one of my unaltered males I refuse to nueter them because a.) there is no garuntee that it will help and b.) there is no gauruntee that they will wake back up. It's just easier for me to have a spare cage in case any seperating needs to be done