# Male being overenthusiastic with ASF/Multis...



## maddeh

I got a young pair of female multis before Christmas, and have slowly been making friends with them as they are extremely shy. I decided that as one of the females is about the same size as the male I intended them for (and didn't want to put him up against a full grown multi as I was unsure how the meeting would go), to introduce them 2 nights ago. All seemed to go well, and I moved them into a cage together and they all spent quite some time digging around, etc...
However, Dash (my male fancy mouse) quickly became overenthusiastic with his new females, and repeatedly tries to mount them despite their obvious unwillingness. The smaller female doesn't worry me too much, as she seems to defend herself quite well, but the larger one just tries to scuttle away and I'm worried that he is making her spend the majority of her time hiding from him.
Is this normal behaviour? I'm assuming he is partly trying to assert his dominance. 
Will this stop eventually? I've distracted him a few times and the girls quickly regain confidence, but sometimes he follows them into their nest and they then spend a long time in there as if waiting for him to leave.
I've never had multis before and they are awesome, so hate to think that they are stressed


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## Frizzle

I'm no expert to keeping ASFs, I only got my trio a couple months ago. I tried to introduce a male with my two females (put male ASF in with female mice), and what started as humping quickly escalated into a full out attack, and one of my girls ended bitten up. I've been hesitant to try reintroducing them with any of my male mice, and have just stuck with keeping the ASFs together. The male ASF in the girls tank went just fine, they were a bit freaked out by him at first (as was the male mouse with the female ASFs) but they quickly accepted him.


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## Rhasputin

Just leave them be. 
The males will usually get over it pretty fast, and everyone will live happily together.


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## maddeh

Thank you Rhasputin! Needed some reassurance as I tend to worry too much haha. I will hopefully have some nice pictures of them snuggled up together sometime then


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## Frizzle

Rhasputin said:


> Just leave them be.
> The males will usually get over it pretty fast, and everyone will live happily together.


In my instance the male drew blood and I came back from class to find it smeared along the glass of the tank. At what level of aggression/interest do you recommend intervening? They had been fine the day before and that morning, otherwise I wouldn't have left them alone. Everybody was fine afterwards, but I'm not keen on it happening again.


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## Rhasputin

So your male ASF was trying to breed your female mice?
I've never had that happen before. That may be a bad sign, if the males are trying to breed the mice, that the male ASF are aggressive.


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## Frizzle

No, my male mouse attacked my female ASF. Just the one got beat up, who I think is the dominant female. The male ASF was just fine with the lady mice, they were great together.


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## Rhasputin

Oh! Okay!
Well, generally with ASFs the females are dominant, so it's possible that they had a dominance issue between the two of them. 
Sometimes, you just have to try another ASF. :|

It's not a perfect science, unfortunately. Sometimes male/male pairs work, sometimes they don't, sometimes male/female pairs work, sometimes that don't, etc.


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## maddeh

Just wanted to give an update - all is well with Dash and his ASF girls, and they seem to have even let him into their nest today! (previously he'd been sitting on top of it, bless him!)
Will get pictures when I can, but they refuse to come out when the lighting is good


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## amyminicooper

Hi there...this may sound stupid but I keep hearing you can not put a female fancy mouse and a female ASF rat together. Why is this? 
I would have thought they'd get along fine and live happily because they are both females...

I did have 2 female ASF rats but one was attacked and killed by the cat  and so now i only have one left and she is lonely. I do have 2 male ASF rats but I dont want to spend £90-100 getting her spayed just so she can play with them while she out of the cage -.- ...


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## amyminicooper

can 1 or 2 female fancy mice live with 1 ASF female?


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