How do I know when's the right time... and lots of other questions!!

[Mummypig]

Presently my new girl Jasmine is in quarantine, but when her 30 days is up I plan on putting her cage next to Poppy's cage with a view to (eventually) having them in the same cage (it will be in Poppy's cage as its the biggest.) I've read through all the posts I can find on this, and other forums but I can't find the information I'm looking for (many appologies if I've just been looking in the wrong place!!)

So what I want to know is.. What should I expect when the cages are together? Should I expect spitting and urinating at each other through the bars, or ignoring each other.. or something else? and is there a certain length of time before I should introduce them fur-to-fur, as it were, or do I wait until they seem to be unphased by the other?

I thought I'd start with swapping toys and sharing dust and then after a while move on to exploring each other's cage, and when they're ok with that I thought I might do very heavily supervised playtime in a playpen that neither have been in before. Does that sound right? and whats this about dabbing vanilla on noses or tails? Is it worth doing that or am I over thinking this? I just want to use my quarantine time to make sure I'm doing this right.

 

[alli713]

Most people say to wait to introduce them face to face until they ignore each other when their cages are next to each other. When their cages are next to each other what they will do really depends, no one can tell you for sure. Some chins will bite on their cage bars and paw out trying to reach the other chin. Some will totally ignore the other chin. I've never had one of my females try to spray the other female when their cages are next to each other, that's only happened when they're out together.

Quite honestly though, I've never had that method work for me. Even now with my cages next to each other occasionally one of my girls will bite her cage to try to get to the female in the cage next to her. They never stopped noticing the other chin. But that's my girls, they tend to be territorial.

The intro methods I've had work was a playtime in a totally new environment. I didn't bother cage next to cage as that didn't work with my first intro. For me, those two chins got together right away, it just worked out that way that they got along. One was dominate the other submissive. They lived happily together until I had to put one down due to malo.

Otherwise the other method I did was a smoosh method. This was putting two chins in a small show cage together and riding around in a car. This one is a bit iffy to some people, and you need to make sure the space is small enough that they can't hurt each other. The reason I chose this method with those two chins is because I tried the joined playtime and it went okay but one chin was continuously trying to mount the other and the other was just scared so she'd run away not allowing the dominate chin to finish what she started. With the number of intros I've done/attempted I could tell it wasn't aggression on either of their parts, so I felt comfortable forcing them to be stuck next to each other. And these two are still together to this day.

Not sure if that helps, but that's my experience.