aggressive fighting and terrified rats

Question
QUESTION: hI! i have 4 rats at the moment, and i guess i'd consider myself a relatively new owner, i started with a hairless about 2-3 months ago, and my little group has grown:)  i have the hairless, a black hooded( squeaks) who are both about the same age, i also have henry, another hooded who although he is younger than the other 2 boys, is MUCH larger, and horribly aggressive all of a sudden.. i'd put his age at between 2 and 3 months to the other boys 4-5 months.. i also have a baby ( month or 2 old) what i THINK is a double rex, soft short slightly kinky peach fuzz coat. any who, the problem..
i went on vacation a week ago, left the 3 older boys in their ratty condo in my husbands care, plenty of food water and nest spots. i came home to find the hairless COVERED in scratches and bites, and about half the weight he was when i left.. squeaks, the older hooded, has bites on his back, and a HUGE gash behind his arm.. henry, the youngest and largest, was unwounded, but clearly the aggressor, as sqeaks and tat(hairless) were huddled together on the second floor, terrified out of their little ratty minds of going downstairs to what is apparently henrys domain.. i seperated the hairless out into the baby's cage first, to give him a chance to heal, and to make sure he wasnt causing the fighting.. within 2 days he was almost totally healed, and iw as still hearing fighting at night in the large cage.. so sqeaks came into the seperate cage with tat and the baby.. its been 3 days, there is no fighting in the small baby cage between tat, squeaks and the baby, and any time i try to re-introduce anyone into the large cage with henry, he immidiately attacks them.. he is not aggressive towards me, other than a new, slight reluctance to come out of his cage, he is a lover and likes cuddling with me, nothing different there. i cant really afford to get him nuetered, and i'd be to afraid to seperate him and buy him a new baby cagemate to keep him company.. he showed aggression to the baby when i tried to introduce them. any suggestions to getting them all back to a big happy family, or is henry doomed to a solitary life, being able to see all his ratty roommates in the cage next door, but not get to them to play?

ANSWER: Hi Robyn

My rule of thumb, no more than 3 intact males together at once. So much testosterone at once, and to think, they have not even reached puberty which is from 6 to 8 months old and this is when the real test is taken: real aggression sets in at this age and serious fights break out. The rats will stand on their hind legs, push their opponent, hiss, show their teeth, puff their fur, and yes, I said hiss already didn't I?  LOL!!  They will circle each other, pushing or shoving the other to see who backs down and if they both stand tall, get that squirter bottle ready to squirt.NEVER break it up yourself or you will be bitten and if you have never been bitten by an angry rat, take it from me, its not pleasant.  Rats have 10 pounds of pressure in their bite. Thats some serious clamping down. A nice puncture wound keeps you from need stitches which in turn means a day of seeping blood and lots of deep throbbing pain...so again, do not break up a real aggressive fight between rats, regardless of sex. They have such horrible eyesight and they are so angry at the time they don't stop to think it may not be their opponent and will just bite at anything.

This is NOT common, however, but lets face it, pet store rats are far from bred for quality health and even temperament so its hard to tell who has what going through their DNA.  Aggression is usually spotted and bred out of a line when it comes to a reputable breeder.

Anyhow, the fact he is so young tells me that he is just rough housing....finding his place in the mischief of rats and he wants to be alpha.  I would try to put him with another rat (not the baby or the hairless) but the one you mentioned above (I think you said you have a total of 4 bucks)   See how two get along.

Also, you don't have to worry about him being doomed for life having to live alone...neutering is an option and although you said its not in the cards at the money financially, you can always put some aside for a few months.  A good vet that is experienced with rats and surgery should not charge more than $150 which sounds hefty when you don't have it handy, but they can let you work it out too if you ask....ask the VET, never the receptionist.  They will ALWAYS say no that they don't accept payments etc....but again, I wouldn't ask them...talk it over with the vet.

Hope this helped !!


Regards

Sandy

It doesn't seem like he is aggressive, he is just rough and this is the prime age for him to want to play wrestle. How long have you had him?



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: yes i have 4, the fighting started before i even introduced the baby to the bigger guys,t he baby is in his own, small barred cage until he is large enough that he cant escape the bars of the big boy cage..i bought the hairless in august, within a week i also bought squeaks..they were about 2-3 months old when i got them so they are about 5-6 months old now..i'v had henry( the aggressive one) a little over a month, i think..i'm horrible with dates... but he has more than tripled in size in that time..he was in a tiny cage with his mother and 14 litter mates, so maybe  he is older than i think, but didnt really grow like he should have squished in a small cage with minimal food and space? should i wait until squeaks armpit gash has healed before i let him in the cage with henry again? it is scabbed over already, no swelling or redness.. i'm going to clean, disinfect and re-arrange the large cage today, and i'll try just squeaks and henry in it to see if that might help.. is it ok to have all 4 out to play together on nuetral ground, so that henry gets used to the baby? eventually i'd like them to all live together in the large cage, but i do have a second, smaller cage i can seperate the two hair-impaired ratties in if i have to..

ANSWER: Hair impaired ratties.....LOL!!  Thats cute. I like that.

Hairless rats....they are just so dang cute. They have a weaker immune system than our furred friends,since they lack a thymus gland and lack of eyelashes allows their eyes to remain unprotected. They look much worse with the scratches than it really is because they are naked, or better yet, hair impaired!! ;-)  

What I did when I had four bucks and two were aggressive,even toward me, I had those two neutered and kept the other two apart from them. They ended up all being happy that way but I felt guilty so I let them play together during play time (supervised of course) because it has been known that older bucks will kill a baby rat, usually younger than your baby is though, so I would let him know that the baby is around but not leave them alone together till baby can hold his own.  

You may have been off with the aggressive rats age and although he should have been removed from his mother at the tender age of 5 weeks old *bucks get both mom, who is fertile 24 hours after giving birth, and also his female siblings pregnant when he is just 5 weeks old*  
If you bought him a month or so ago, guesstimate like I do since I am also lousy with dates and anything else I dont write down first, he may just be either older than you think or just more hyper and high strung than the others.
I would try the two and two like you suggested, the hairless and double rex (does he have curly whiskers too? I LOVE those rats too...check out my website and see the page called WHAT IS A FUGS if you want to see a funky looking double rex I used to have. The link is in my profile)
ANYHOW.....sorry to keep going off track....
try the two and two and see how it goes, allowing them out for playtime so they always know each other...if the aggressive one continues to really beat up on his only cagemate he may just have to live alone but still get playtime with his buddies till he outgrows it and he will outgrow it because I truly do not see serious aggression, we are more or less protecting the other rats from getting a more serious wound that may require a vet to stitch up or also an abscess which rats are prone to getting too once they get a nasty bite or scratch, so if you do notice swelling and a scab over the swelled area, let me know and I can guide you how to know if its an abscess and what to do for it next so you wont need a vets intervention. You may already know this anyhow but just in case....for future reference.

My mind keeps wandering back to my four boys PLUS the two other bucks I rescued from the dog pound. They are older, around 2 or so, and are RELENTLESS with each other when it comes to who the boss is.  I have gotten used to the screeches Templeton makes and after observation I have seen he is a drama king, screeching and squealing as soon as Bo comes near him...hes very vocal which makes it sound worse. I bought a baby monitor (the least expensive model they make, I didn't need anything that summons the National Guard, just to alert me to buck fights, so I paid about $10 and Walmart and it is very handy.  I keep the volume down low (the speaker is in my bedroom and the receiver is of course in the rat room in front of the two cages) and I have learned the individual squeaks each buck makes....kind of how a mother can pick out her crying infant in a room full of screaming infants! When the squeaks reach a certain level or doesn't let up after a good protest or two, I go in and usually give them a few pinches of dry oatmeal flakes to shut them up and it takes them so long to eat them that they forget what they were pissin and moanin about in the first place, but if I find the two bucks mounting each other or otherwise ready to rumble, I get the squirter bottle (I usually reach for the mister I use for my hermit crab tanks! LOL!) and squirt at them.  They usually stop in their tracks, look around and start to lick their fur for an hour to dry off from the tiny little mist they got from me.  This also takes their mind off of what they were arguing about in the first place. I have had these two boys since June and no major issues as of yet...but I just think it was bad genes myself with these two guys and that is why they spent their lives in a shelter till they ended up on death row at the dog pound.

Anyhow, enough about me....just hoping to shed some more light on your guys and what you are up against.
I think it should work out....you have a handle on it which is good...alot of people freak out and just return the buck to the pet store and that to me creates more confusion to the poor rat and will create even more aggression in the future.


~~~~~Sandy

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: alrighty, the cage is cleaned, i tried putting squeaks back in with henry.. and watched for 20 minutes while henry stood up, ++beat the poopoo out of squeaks all over the cage, rubbed himself on him sideways(scent marking?) and gave him several bloody bites and  even after spraying them with a mister( the cage is right next to the frog cage..lol) even water was ignored.. poor squeaks, sore, scared, and bloody kept coming to the door, climbing up on it, staring at me like, mom please please save me!! i finally couldnt take it any more, and opened the door, and squeaks ran right out and hid under my hair..he is currently sitting at my ear, chittering and grooming me, almost like he is telling me all about his ordeal,,lol
i looked at your page, and i LOVE the mask that the ratty had.. too cute..lol my hairless is totoally bald, not a stray hair on him..i cant figure out the new baby though, i dont know if his hair is so curly its short, or so short it looks curly.

Answer
ARGH!!!!! That little stinker!!  He wants to be boss, no ifs,ands or butts about it. I mean buts. ;-)

Yeah, that sideways walking is total aggression/dominance behavior. Some rats will body slam sideways or walk side ways pushing into the other rat more and more. My older buck (the dog pound rescues) puts his face on the cage floor and drags it to the other rat and pushes his head under him while he is sleeping and LIFTS him up in the air. THE BRAT!
I can suggest a loud sound like putting loose change in a can and shake it at him when he starts his fighting but that isn't fair to scare the other rats and sometime tells me if he could get his own can of change he would shake it back at you!!
I would let him live alone for now if you can....it seems he wants to do that anyhow.  Don't let all of these websites tell you that a lone rat will die blah blah blah...I am the first to say that yes, I have had a pair of rats and when one died, the other died soon after from illness because he was so stressed from depression his immune system became very unstable and he got so sick he didn't even care to fight it off.  BUT these were life long cage mates.  Henry clearly is making his choice right now he wants to rule the roost. I have removed many bucks from the colony and they lived alone and were HAPPY even living to be 2.5 years old and 3 years old.
I rescued a wild female named Holly. At 11 weeks old she was a monster and I do mean MONSTER. Being a wild rat and not trusting humans, it took a solid week to get her to trust me but when she did we were bonded for life. HOWEVER, she totally DESPISED the domestic Does, as they did her too. She would go to their cage and lift up her leg like a male dog and just urinate all over. If they dare go near her cage she would be there, ready to swat them and bite through he cage.

Holly lived alone all of her life and lived to be just a few months shy of her 4th birthday, so they CAN live alone as long as they make that choice, and although Henry is very young yet and I still feel he will outgrow it (either that or again,save your change up and have him fixed in a few months from now) if you allow him to play with the other males during play time and he plays NICE, that will keep him acquainted with the other three and this will make it easier to put him in the cage again, but for now, for the safety of the other rats, it isn't worth it at this point.
I would put a piece of cardboard to separate the cages and here is why....once, one of my rats tails dangled down into Kirby,or male KILLER RAT that was one of my many lone rescues with aggression issues, tore the heck out of the other rats tail causing a serious and painful degloving injury so I always put cardboard between cages so tails cant fall into other rats cages.

I wish I could suggest something other than neutering.  There are hormone injections that he can take believe it or not but again, no vet will even consider this at his young age other than neutering and if only you could do it, you would have a new rat. Smudge and Sebastian were rotten mean to each other, other rats and ME, and after the neuter I swore they were switched on me because they were so different. It took about 2 weeks to really notice a difference but they are sweeter and they kept their soft fur which they also lose to testosterone.  They are also much smaller than the other boys....my big bucks tip the scales at anywhere from 2 to 2.5 lbs and the neuters Smudge, is about 450 grams (about a pound) and Sebastian is a tad bigger.  Best $250 ever spent (this included removal of two tumors Sebastian had on his chest...and believe it or not they came from a so called reputable breeder.I was tempted to send her the entire bill for both the neuters and tumor removal since they were supposed to be SOCIAL...she had the nerve to say I just don't know about rats.
LOL
The vet and I had a good chuckle over that. I never told her what I do so she really didn't know much about me.
Anyhow I did refuse to pay her 80 dollars for four rats after spending double that to fix them first!!

Where did Henry come from?