introducing a male and female

[kerrib1985]

hi everyone well iv had my female chin for about six months and about three weeks ago i got a male chin.
they are in different cages at the min but I'm hoping that sometime soon they will be in the same cage. the cages are right next to each other and i change their toys and sand baths around. so they can get used to each others smells.
for the last couple of nights i have been letting them out together my male is quite happy and doesn't really take much notice of my female but if he does come near her Charlie (my female) will go for him nothing to bad she doesn't chase him tho.
when i first let them out together Charlie really had a go at midnight (my male chin). Last night she only did it two three times and it didn't last long couple of seconds and she stopped.
iv never introduced chins before so I'm not sure if the introduction is working. or when the right time to put them in the same cage.
does anyone have any tips or ideas
this is midnight

this is Charlie

[kerrib1985]

sorry bout the sizes of the photo not sure how to make them smaller

[deguconvert]

They are so beautiful!!! Lucky you!

[buzz]

I don't really know about introductions with chins. I hear they are hard to introduce... I think the main thing is to get them smelling the same so use the old vanilla essence in the sand bath trick.

As I'm not sure of chins I'll describe what happens for degus:
Keep them insight of one another.. perferably next door to one another and swap them around each others cages for a night and over again for the next night etc...this gets the cage smelling like the other making the scent more familiar.

When your confident try intoducing on neutral territory like a bath tub or something. If they fight seperate and return to the swapping cages... it can take a very long time.

It may be a similar method for chinchillas...

Are you planning on breeding then?

[kerrib1985]

no midnight has been done. he was a rescue and i was told he was a fur biter and when i got him his fur was in a bad way but i have had him about a month now and i havnt seen him do any fur biting as yet and his fur is slowly getting bettet so he must be happy with me i guess.

[buzz]

Lucky chin

Sorry I didn't fully read the first post... a bit tired

It sounds like its working, she probably wants to establish dominance, they need to tussel to do so so providing there's not blood things should be working out.

[icklebee]

We had just had an accident with our chinchillas! We let 2 out at a time. We had the 2 boys out (who are in seperate cages) One of the girlies decided she was going to squeeze out of her cage while i was changing their food and needless to say one of the boys jumped in. !!! AND WOULDNT MOVE. We noticed there was no fighting but they were staying at opposite ends of the cage.

3 days later they are now cuddled up.

I have been told it could take months to pair up but we just let the chins do what they wanted
The boy has been neutered so at least we wont have any little babies appearing we had enough of the degus !!! lol

[buzz]

Thats the easiest introduction ever