quick question about introducing!

[renee87r]

Hi guys! Ive been secretly reading this site for about 9 months now(and by that i mean i was just never a member)... however I just made a name because i have a question!

Im in the process of introducing my chins, two males. One is about 12 weeks (I got him 2 weeks ago) the other is a year. Weve been letting them see each other during play time but between seperate play pens, so they can run up to each other if they want.

They seemed super curious about each other (neither seemed like they wanted to fight) running up to each other and kind of licking at each others mouths? So we decided to let them play in the bathroom together, (neutral ground). They both explored the room and when they came in contact they would kind of lick at each others mouths.

Neither seemed really bothered by it. However, then my older one started humping him. I read this is a dominance thing, and I guess this is my question: what do I do about this, if anything?

We stopped the play date after it happened two times and put them back. The little one didn't seem hurt or bothered though. Do we just continue doing small play dates? or something else? Ive read alot about trimmed whiskers and that kind of stuff. But i wanted to ask specifically. Thank you guys I appreciate the guidance!

 

[tunes]

Unless he gets completely spazz about it, it's just the natural way for them to establish who is at the top of the food chain in their pairing. You can try and get him to cut back on that by trimming his whiskers short, but it's going to happen in the future at some point or another. Females do it to females and to males as well.

 

[renee87r]

oh ok, thank you. I just didn't know if that would lead to further dominance issues and then aggression. I guess what im wondering is will this cease after time, or lead to further problems such as aggression, or could it go either way?

 

[brittanycrystal]

Not to nag, but you should probably be quarantining the new chin. And even if you don't want to go through that process, its probably a little stressful for a chinchilla to move into a new home, meeting a new chinchilla soon after could induce antisocial behavior or worst case scenario diarreah.

But the humping, or mounting, is unavoidable. My bonded boys still do it occasionally to show eachother who's boss. Its not okay if one chin becomes obsessed with it, that's too much on the victim. If that happens there are various things you can do to try and correct antisocial behavior.

 

[tunes]

There's no way to know for sure Renee. Chins are weird creatures. They can get along for years then suddenly turn on each other for no reason, so it's "possible" that dominance humping can lead to more, but there's just no way to know. Trim those whiskers off and monitor them and see what happens. Just always have that spare cage handy, just in case.