new chin not getting along W/ others plus behavior changes in the old ones

[mjricha]

Hello, I would just like to say that I have been a member for quite a while but I switched emails recently and couldn't get my password reset due to this, and had to make a new account, so I'm not a newbie lol.

I have three chins that I purchased about a year apart between each of them, so I'm no stranger to introductions. They are (were) all bonded perfectly fine, and I used several methods to bond them which worked quite well (neutral zone + cage within a cage) for them.

Now fast forward about 2.5 years later, and I my gf finds a craigslist ad for a chinchilla and she wants to rescue it instead of letting someone who doesn't know anything about them to get her. She is about a year old (the others range from 2.5 to 4 yrs), and was actually very well taken care of. Good food, nice cage, handled very regularly, etc. She was placed in quarantine for about 3 1/2 weeks, and then i placed her small cage out of bite distance from the big cage which houses the other three. just to make it quick here's what else I did in order

1 st week - cages out of bite distance
3rd week - cages closer (so they could nose touch), and short stints of neutral zone
-some fighting and pee, but nothing major
5th week - Cage within cage + litter swapping + longer times in NZ
7th week - cages completely touching + everything else

The above method seemed to work perfectly to intro my last 3 to each other. Since they seemed to all be getting along ok (other than some slight fighting through the cage and in the NZ), i figured I could try to put them in the same big cage together. (I had put the new one in that cage quite often without the others just to accustom her to it) Whoo boy was there ever fighting. Bad fighting. My most docile chin decided to become a heavyweight overnight and was doing this weird thing Ive never seen before where she was kinda mounting the new one and biting the new ones neck and wouldn't let go. (there was no damage to the new one, just fur lost). Now for some reason, two of my older chins decided they hate each other and fight constantly. They have never fought before, but in the NZ they gang up on the new one. I guess I'm just stumped. I can't seem to get past the last phase, and now my old chins are being really weird, and they have NEVER been that way before. Any help getting the intro going again would be a great help.

Thanks in advance!

Oh I probably mentioned this before but they are all female, and other than the intro the new one is probably the nicest chin I have. Very very friendly and easy going.

 

[ChinnyMom]

while i've never introduced chins myself, i have read that getting a trio to bond is difficult, and adding a fourth chin into the mix could disturb the bonding that the trio had going on before. you may just have to keep them all separate now, or introduce them back into pairs and have two cages.

 

[Laurie]

Chins don't always get along--not all chins will and can bond with one another. This situation sounds as if it's best to leave the bonded chinchillas together and keep the new one separate--if the older chins are fighting with each other now you may have to keep all three of these ladies separated.

 

[Whimsy]

The larger the bonded group, the more difficult it is to add another. Each personality has to be able to get along with the new one, so with more personalities comes more potential for mismatching. You were lucky with your three, but now the delicate balance has been disrupted.

When we do intros, we make sure to completely swap out the cage if possible so that there is less tendency to defend territory. From your write up, it sounds like a dangerous situation to try to proceed. My concern would be to reestablish the harmony among your trio. You may need to entirely remove the newcomer from the home to do so.