Originally Posted by racinghamster
Hi charcobain. It`s nice that your adult girls will have some newbies coming in, but yes, they do need introducing in a small, neutral area and the main cage will need emptying of toys and only scatter feed and add back accessories one at a time to avoid squabbling. If your cage is tall with levels, It`s not ideal, but if it`s all you have as their main home, they will probably settle at some stage depending on whether one of your existing adults decides to be boss and bully the others, which can happen.
What I used to do was this. If I already had two females happily living together, I didn`t bother upsetting them by adding more new females to the mix. What I done was, brought some younger females in as a safegurd, but gave them their OWN cage, sited a few inches away from the other mice. They can then get to smell and associate with one another without actually being in one another`s territory. The mice will climb the bars, sniff out the newbies next door and over the weeks, they look for each other. Or sometimes, don`t even notice they have neighbours!
If one of my females passed on through old age or illness, I would then introduce her to the other two mice, or even just another single female as I found this less stressful.
Introductions are best done in a small plastic tank or carrier, not a large space like a bath or anything that will overwhelm them or make them agitated. Sometimes they will bum sniff, squeak, chase and if your lucky, won`t have any real issues, but this has to be done usually early in the morning when the mice are awake, but ready to sleep, if you know what I mean. They usually curl up in their intro tank, but once they are moved into the main cage, things could turn, so the main thing is to find a small plastic tank they can stay in where they can bond over a few days. If when moved they start to squabble badly or one causes trouble, they should be placed back in the tub again until they settle down. It can go smoothly or badly, depending on the mice really.
But if your happy to house the newbies close by or keep them in a separate cage until such a time your left with a single female, that`s probably a good time to give her company, but you can just plonk them together and try keeping them all in a group. It just needs to be done in a small space and no toys or wheels to fight or argue over. x
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