Fancy Rats Forum

Hi newbie here so any and all help gratefully received. We have 2 brothers spike and crumble we have had them 2 months now and they are 4.5 months old, all has been great we have fell in love with them, but we are seeing issues with crumble becoming increasingly aggressive to poor spike who’s a little sweetheart. crumble is chasing spike around the cage a lot and spike runs for his life! If he catches him he pins him and dominates him which at 1st I thought was fine as it was all part of the dominance hierarchy but crumble is getting move aggressive and as a result spike has had a few scratches on his body and tonight there was a big fight in the bottom of the cage which resulted in spike screaming and running to hide in the Sputnik. A lot of the issues start around feeding, I scatter feed and make sure the food is all over the cage, which was working but now crumble has become wise to this and will literally scofff anything he can find on the bottom of the cage and then bully and harass spike wherever he is eating until spike runs away. Should I be thinking about neutering?

Welcome to the forum

Yes, sounds like a classic case of excess hormones. Neutering should make a big difference, but he's still quite young so leave it another month if you can to give him more time to grow, although you need to balance that with Spike's needs.

For future consideration, rats do best in groups of 3 or more for lots of reasons, but bullying is one of them as then a bullied rat can share the heat with another, or the third rat can help diffuse tensions.

Hi Cyber ratty, thanks for replying, that’s very helpful We are looking at getting some more ratties but at the time we got theses boys they were the last 2 from that litter and thought we would add more when we can, space is limiting us at the moment but we are in the process of setting up a dedicated rat room so we can get more (they are so addictive lol). It’s already kicked off this morning with a row over a hammock! It’s quite a small one and they both normally snuggle up together in there but today crumble decided he didn’t want spike to share it I have taken the small hammock out now, they have a larger hammock, Sputnik and other hides they can use. You said to wait a month before looking at the neutering option, is there anything I can do in the meantime to help spike out as he seems so nervous and won’t go near crumble and I am worried that this will keep escalating x

How heavy is Crumble? I would say 4 months is the bare minimum for neutering, with 6 months being better, but if he's a decent size and you're worried about waiting longer, then go ahead.