Behavior: Help with introductions and stress/nipping

[virologirl]

Hi everyone!

I am hoping someone on here can give me a little advice. I have a ~5ish yr old female gp that I just rescued a few months ago. She is super sweet and loves to be scratched. I felt a little bad for her being all alone, so I am currently fostering another two females from a rescue...also really sweet girls. I am thinking about adopting one of the two girls as a friend for her. Right now they are all in separate cages, and I would like to see if I can put them all into one giant CandC cage. So far I have let them play together, and they seem to all have issues with each other...ie...teeth chattering and chasing/nipping each other...No blood drawn or anything, and they only chase each other for a second...ie if one happens to walk past the others line of sight...but they dont seem to enjoy each other's company at all. I noticed, also, that the three formerly sweet piggies get very hyper/stressed after having been together. In other words, I put the girls back into their separate cages after playtime and two of them rushed at and nipped my hand as I was moving their food bowls. I don't want to stress the poor things out, but I don't know if this is just normal dominance sorting that will go away after a few days. Any thoughts?

Thanks!
Lisa

[Africa]

Everything you describe is normal. Leave them together unless they draw blood. They not going to love each other straight away while they establishing the hierarchy. It takes time, so definitely put them together.
Just make sure they have a big enough cage. See this excellent thread on Guinea Lynx. It has helpful information with pictures and videos on what is normal dominance behavior.
http://www.guinealynx.info/forums/viewtopic.php?t=46468

[virologirl]

Great! Thanks so much for the advice! I am putting together a 4x2 attached to a 3x2 (L shaped) CandC cage for them so I think that should give them enough space to spread out. I will finish setting it up tonight, so I will let you know how it goes.