Male rat getting very aggressive...

Hi,

I have 2 male rats, all was superb until a couple of weeks back. Venus started throwing his weight around, he is now doing the usual fluffing up of fur, and has now attacked my son 3 times, the last time quite a bad bite I'm afraid. We are actually getting scared of going into the room where he is.

He is booked in to be neutured in a few days, has anyone had experience of this - can I expect a reasonable change? I hope so, as his cage mate is now in hiding some of the time.

I have provisionally booked them both in to be neutured, as thought it might be best to just get it all over and done with in one go. So that the opportunity for the calmer one to become more aggressive doesn't arise. There are times when he will start the fight, but I'm not sure if that's because he's expecting a smack on the nose!

They do have quite a bit of freedom, every evening they have 2-3 hours out of their cage. We spend a lot of time in there, but at the moment can't. We are removing the calmer boy for a short time, to give him some space.

Any advice or experience would be great to keep me going until we get Venus to the vets.

Thanks in advance,
Ginny