extreme sibling rivalry

[operationotohamstry]

Okay, so I've had these two Campbell pups for a few months now. They are about 3-4 months of age now and have lived peacefully together until just recently. I know that its quite common for brothers to turn on each other and have to be separated but I do have a few questions on that.

The competition all started when I introduced a house into the cage. They have a cage with 2 platforms because they loved to climb the walls so much I just decided to add platforms for them. They kept sleeping on the top one and there was no cover, so I got them a house. Next think I know their fighting over the house. Now Rock, my black male who was once very timid and let Moon, my blue male, walk all over him, is suddenly finding his bravado and stealing food from Moon. Rock started kicking moon out of the house after noisy squeak fights, and even bullying him around the food dish. I took out the house and added a second food dish on the cage floor (the main food dish is on the first platform).

Now Rock started pushing him off the top platform. I'm thinking of just taking out the platforms altogether or putting them in separate spots in the tank so there are separate even leveled platforms, or just separating them entirely. The only thing I'm worried about with doing that, is that Rock will suddenly become tank aggressive. Neither one of them show even the slightest bit of tank aggression right now, but I worry that if Rock 'wins' this little bought or doesnt have any competition, that he'll suddenly just get territorial and start biting us. I could diminish that I suppose by taking Rock out of the territory and giving him an entirely new cage so he's got to start from scratch, though I'd honestly rather keep them together in a cage. Not that I'm against separating them, but mostly I'm just curious about the territorial thing if they have their own cages suddenly.

[SarahJ]

Sounds like the house has caused the problems.
I would take the house and the platforms out and make sure they have two of everything and scatter the food. go back to basics.

[Hope]

I would agree with what sarah j has suggested. I am having problems with my robos and was advised to take everything out of the cage, just have substrate, a pile of bedding, scatter food, and a water bottle, and then see how they get on. After a week or so you can begin to reintroduce toys etc, just one at a time, very gruadually, and take anything out straight away if is causes fights. As long as they havent hurt each other I would give this a try. It has calmed my two robos down a lot, but they do still have fights from time to time.

[souffle]

I'd do as Hope suggests. They are reaching maturity now and the hormones are kicking in so they are acting like teenage yobs. They may get over it. You can only try the minamilist approach and see how it goes.

[Amethyst_ice]

love it souffle...teenage yobs lol just have a vision of little campbells in hoodies and chains lol

good luck though, reduce the batchelor pad x