Introducing 6 week old rat to 3 15 week olds

[Kim1005]

Hi!

Recently I noticed on craigslist someone in need of homing some baby rats. They are still only 4 weeks, but I have a big double critter nation and wanted to give a baby a home. Ive never done introductions, but have researched. I really would prefer not to adopt 2 more. Would there be an issue with introducing such a young single rat to three older (but still young) rats? Any extra advice?

 

[Coffee Babies]

What gender do you have?

 

[Kim1005]

What gender do you have?

Boys

 

[Coffee Babies]

Boys can be harder to introduce since they have higher testosterone, but those ages are pretty young so I don't know how high it would be at that age. You can start by introducing them in a neutral area like a bed or tub and if they don't get along well together you can do a longer introduction like JoinRat's method: Using Baby Steps to Introduce Rats to Rats - JoinRats It's your decision whether you want to risk getting a baby who may or may not get along with your existing rats but I think as long as you introduce them correctly, you won't have any problems.

 

[SQ]

Since you are introing rats over 12 weeks old, you will need to do gradual intros.
The baby will need to be at least 8 weeks old but 10 weeks is safer.
Thus it would be best if you got another same sex baby as that is too long for a babu=y to live alone.

For intro information please see joinrats.org and Introducing new rats
Also, our Reference Thread has a lot of good info REFERENCE Thread - Read Only

Hopefully all rats are the same sex as having more then one intact sex in the same household is an accident waiting to happen
Good luck and I hope you let us know how it goes