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[Danlott1]

Hi there,

We're hoping someone can help us with a question. We have three chins, all males. Boo and Kiwi, both standard grays, have been living together for about half a year. Boo is the oldest and has been with us the longest, but Kiwi is larger. They seemed to have worked out their domination dynamic and got along fine for the past six months aside from some tension in the first week or so. Recently, we introduced Jiggy, a younger, smaller mosaic chin. We did so gradually, by doing cage swaps and introductions in neutral spaces. It took time, but finally they got along enough to move them in together. We moved the three in to a large critter nation cage last week, and for the first five days or so they did really well. They would cuddle and share food and play without fighting. But in the last couple days, they've started making aggressive sounds (we call it oinking) and chasing each other around the cage. There has been a lot of shedding. At first, Boo and Jiggy seemed to be getting along but Kiwi was the outsider who was getting chased and shedding. Now, Kiwi and Jiggy are evidently on OK terms, but Boo's fur is starting to get uneven from shedding and we think he might have lost some weight, though we're not sure.

Any ideas why the three chins are suddenly acting so strange? What can we do to make sure they are all (especially poor Boo) safe and healthy, without separating them and undoing the last week of progress when the three were getting along really well?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

[kageri]

I would guess after getting over the new cage and layout they settle down to work out who was boss and where everyone's place was.  Since they aren't drawing blood or standing their ground to fight they might be able to work it out.  Putting them through the stress may not be worth it though.  That's a personal decision.

First thing to do is get a scale and start weighing at least weekly.  You might want to do every other day on the one who's weight is questionable until you get close enough readings or it obviously shows they need to be separated.  Everyone with small pets should have a good scale.  A digital kitchen or postal scale up to 2lbs (most go to 5) works well and it helps to take a large bowl and zero/tare the scale to it, then set the chin inside with your hand loosely over the top.

2nd make sure there is a food dish for each chin throughout the cage, at least 2 water bottle, and if you feed hay in small amounts in hay racks multiples of those.  Take a look at where they like to hang out and make sure everyone has a spot they enjoy and they aren't fighting over one shelf or perch.  That will lessen resource arguments.

Finally I'd get a ton of toys, branches (the bigger the better but if you have to throw in handfuls of the small ones), multiple wood houses to sit on, in, and eat, both pine and hardwood with natural bark perches, bird toys without plastic work out well and some chin sites sell boredom buster toys, those little bells on either metal stems or chains can have various parrot items and drilled wooden coins for chins stuck on them.  I usually take the pieces that have been chewed off the bird toys and put them on those for a second round of chewing.  Anything you can think of to distract them and break up the cage space so they have less line of sight of each other could help.

[Danlott1]

Thank you for the reply.
We'll try to get a scale and a good amount of chew treats. Just to be safe we sperated kiwi and jig away from Boo for the night hoping to give everyone some time to cool down. We did notice though prior to the separation that Kiwi would try to go up to sniff Boo but both would then rear up and make aggressive like sounds, this mainly happened if Boo was in his wood house with no where left to go. But if he could he would just jump away and a chasing party of all three chins would happen.
So I don't know if those are clear signs that the friendship is lost or if growing pains are still being worked out.
One other thing is I've noticed that normally with kiwi he will wag his tail, much like a dog might but while making a bit of a well barking sound. Is that normal or another sign of aggression?
Thanks again for the help we will try getting some different toys for them to play with to hopefully help ease tension