Wheel agressive female

by AmoraChinchilla Fri 17 Apr 2020, 12:35 pm

We have a female mouse who was previously housed with a bully (Mars, who is now living on her own.) We've re-housed the other (Wolf) with a pair of young sisters, and they get along okay... except when the sisters try to use the wheel.

We currently have 2 wheels and a saucer in there for them, and no matter which one the babies try to use, Wolf will chase them off and into the house. She doesn't want anyone to use them except for her.

We're currently trying the time-out method, but I was curious if anyone knew any other way to handle this? We're afraid that her time with Mars might have been a bad influence on her.

If it helps at all, Wolf is 2 and a half months old, and the sisters are just over 5 weeks.

by Carrie Fri 17 Apr 2020, 3:26 pm

Hmm, this is very interesting. You seem to have plenty enough wheels in their area but I see your concern as she seems definitely aggressive. I know the females we have in larger colonies seem to be aggressive towards their home-mates than the females we have in smaller colonies. You have a small colony so this wouldn't be the problem but I'm wondering the size of your home for them? I know that I'm looking to make more tote homes and split my colonies up that have 5-6 mice, down to approx 3 mice. Mine do a heck of alot of barbering in larger colonies too (not that yours is too large, just saying what I observe in mine). I'll be sure to check back on this thread to see what others say b/c I'm curious as to the answer myself.

by MerciToujoursMaPetiteBoop Fri 17 Apr 2020, 7:41 pm

A few quick thoughts:

I see how this could be a combination of her desire to establish alpha mouse status AND her recognition of the two new mousies as extremely young and needing to stay safe in a nest.

Maybe you could try, when she acts aggressively to deny wheel access, moving her to a timeout WITH one of the wheels for her to run on as much as she wants, leaving the other one for the babies to play with.

by AmoraChinchilla Fri 12 Jun 2020, 12:38 am

I know it's been quite awhile, but we finally figured it out!

Turns out that it wasn't about the wheels at all, it was the fact that one of the sisters turned out to be a waltzing mouse. We actually previously had issues with Wolf being extremely aggressive to another waltzing mouse, Dot, when she first came to us- chasing her back into a house and generally beating up on her any time she came out.

The exact same thing was happening here, we just didn't realize that one of the girls was a waltzing mouse because we had only just recently gotten them. Essentially, Wolf just turned out to be very aggressive to mice not socially "normal."

Interestingly, the previously mentioned bully Mars has no issue with waltzing mice, and has not once been aggressive to them.

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Wheel agressive female

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