Nima & Nova / Derrick's Progress

Hello again readers,

We would love to finally write a blog post about Nima and Nova, however we thought it would be sensible to also include some information about Derrick too, as the last time we posted about him on our blog he still hadn't found a friend.

First of all, let's discuss the newbies; 

To keep it short and sweet, Nova and Nima arrived here with us as their previous owner was giving them away for free just 2 minutes away from our home. They were approximately 4-5 months old when they arrived, and other than being very skittish, they were otherwise completely healthy.

Derrick's progress;

I'd recommend reading our previous post about Derrick if you haven't already.

Carrying on from where we left off; after being 100% certain we wouldn't be able to bond Derrick to another male rat, we decided once Leia had fully healed from her first surgery to remove some mammary lumps, we were going to trial Derrick with our females - to see if he would like some girlfriends instead. 

We were incredibly nervous about the first introduction, especially with Derrick having a history of ferociously trying to attack every rat in sight, to be sure he could hurt them before they hurt him. 

Sure enough, that is exactly what happened. He instantly went in to try and draw blood from one of the girls. Every single traditional introduction method we tried just completely failed instantaneously. We started to doubt ourselves at this point. We had done a vast array of introductions under wide variety of circumstances. Normally one of the introduction methods should've worked. 

By now, we had Derrick's personality sussed out pretty well, he was reacting out of fear. He was completely traumatized after being bullied by his ex-cage-mate. This was about more than just hormones we were dealing with, it was something psychological as well.

We knew we had to protect Derrick on the battle ground, we some how had to bring his guard down during a complete war zone of an introduction session.

Late one night, I was thinking to myself about Derrick and what on earth I was going to do with this rat. I knew Derrick was lonely, yet he tried to fight every rat as if they were going to attack him. 

Then all of a sudden it hit me - a shield! 

Historically in battles, soldiers would use a shield to protect themselves from anything that came their way. In this case, I needed to use a shield to protect Derrick from any rat that came his way - hopefully protecting him for long enough that he began to feel safe.

The following day we searched high and low for a 'shield' to use. Ideally we needed to use something clear so Derrick could still see the rats. Eventually, we found exactly what we were looking for. A lid from a pet carrier (which was actually perfect as it also had holes in for Derrick to still be able to smell the rats as well).

This one to be exact.

The easy part was over, now it was time to put my theory to the test. 

We put Leia and Shmi down first, and then Derrick. As soon as Shmi came bouncing over, Derrick immediatly puffed up his fur and tried to muscle her. Instantly I forced the lid down in the middle of them, making sure that the lid was more-or-less hugging Derrick the entire time. Derrick muscled the lid a lot, but it was serving it's purpose- making sure neither rat got hurt.

This happened about 10 times, but from then on, Derrick didn't seem as though he wanted to hurt the others anymore, instead, it was more like he was unsure and uncomfortable with the situation. 

After 20 minutes or so, the rats started to settle down - this is when the magic happened. Derrick lay down, and Shmi came over to sniff him. To my amazement, Derrick didn't react with aggression! It was that slight glimmer of hope that reassured me, I knew I could find Derrick some friends.

The following introduction went even better, Shmi and Derrick actually lay near to each other - he was letting his guard down.

As I'm sure you've guessed, eventually there became a day when Derrick accepted Leia and Shmi as companions - 6 months it took us in total from the day he arrived, up until living full time with Leia and Shmi! However, it was totally worth it. We were all so thrilled to know that Derrick wasn't going to be a lone rat. He was a lost soul when he initially arrived, and was scared of both humans and rats. Finding friends of his own kind really brought him out of his shell.

Back to Nima and Nova;

When the two girls arrived, we decided once they'd settled in and come out of quarantine, we were going to try and introduce them to Derrick, Leia and Shmi. Now, we won't lie were, were a still a little nervous about how Derrick was going to react. We knew he'd accepted Leia and Shmi, but what was to say he was going to like Nima and Nova?

When the day came, we had the 'shield' at hand. Remarkably, Derrick (and the others) accepted them straight away! He seemed really excited to have a few more friends - he wasn't scared anymore. It only took us about one week to properly introduce everyone with the traditional introduction methods.

Now the five of them live happily ever after - the end!

You can keep up with Derrick, Leia, Nima, Nova, and Shmi on our Instagram.