Difficult rat intros - aggressive alpha female

[abby3089]

I have a new young rat, and began doing introductions with my girls. After quarantine, I put their cages side by side for a week. There was some puffiness and huffing from my alpha female initially but that subsided over the course of a few days. So I set up neutral territory-- coffee table top -- for the first intro between my new rat and three girls.

My most submissive girl was just fine as expected -- she's always been incredible with young rats. The middle ranking rat was fine too. The alpha did great for 15 minutes until all of a sudden something snapped and she went for the new one's throat making a bad bite wound on her shoulder. It was bizarre and sudden. No warning signs.

Obviously, the young one is now getting cared for and will be in recovery and will stay isolated until she is back to full health. She is also in a different room, far from my girls, in hopes to reset the introduction and try again in a few weeks.

I have never had a difficult intro, especially with females, usually it has been easy, over the course of one week, and it is why I foolishly let down my guard with this one. So now I am soliciting advice for difficult introductions if anyone has any experience? Tips? I'm willing to draw this out as long as I need to make this work.

My alpha girl, while definitely bossy, has never harmed her cagemates besides some occasional barbering, and she is incredibly docile and friendly with people, so I refuse to believe she's a hopeless case at this point... The new rat is 8 weeks old, and very calm and docile with rats and humans a like.

 

[Joanne]

I would keep the new girl's cage near the other one. The goal is to let them become familiar, and by removing her cage they won't. I usually switch cages if possible, but if you can't, then switch their bedding every day. Keep at it even when you move up to face-to-face again, so that they know each other's scents. You are going to have to go really slowly with this intro. Try and make the neutral intro ground scary so that they are more worried about what is around them than each other. For me it was the kitchen island with the cats on the floor. Mean, but it worked! LOL
Keep the sessions short so that you can end on a positive note. Maybe that will mean only five minutes initially, but you can work up to longer times.
Good luck! I hope your new girl heals quickly.

 

[jorats]

I agree with Joanne. Try that out for now, let us know how that goes. We could also try a time out cage for the bully.
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