3 Tips to help acclimate the family pets - Duke Manor Farm by Laura Janning

Tips to help acclimate the family pets quickly so that everyone can get along

A few months ago we celebrated the birth of three new kittens at Duke Manor Farm. As much as we love our farm animals and kittens, we knew we needed to acclimate the family pets as soon as possible.

Tips to help acclimate the family pets

3 Tips to help acclimate new kittens with dogs

Start as soon as you can

Start as soon as you can acclimating your cats, dogs and other animals with each other. Schedule times each day consistently to do this. Obviously newborn kittens should not be playing with your 75lb dog, but let the dogs and other cats know there are new animals around. We have 4 dogs and only one of them really has an interest in the kittens, and that is to play.

Luckily we have never had a problem with anyone getting along. As you can see in this photo, size doesn’t always matter. Under supervision get new animals in front of the older ones as soon as you can. This helps eliminate the anxiety and curiosity of your pets.

Create Zones

Create ‘zones’ dedicated to each animal i.e. cat free zone., dog free zone. Having individual zone’s establishes trust and freedom in the dedicated areas. Although our dogs have a pretty big range to roam, they are not allowed in the zone that we have set up for the cats. The cat zone is where they sleep, eat and drink…without the dogs hovering around.

Have Patience for the process

Have patience. Too many times we can think this process of acclimating our animals should come naturally and quickly. Well, it doesn’t always work out that way. Even though the kittens are now 4 months old and have had plenty of time around the dogs, we still oversee playtime…just in case.

Building trust between us and our animals first and then between the kittens and dogs has produced the best results in relationship building with our pets. I hope these 3 Tips to help acclimate the family pets will help you when introducing a new friend in your own home.

Click here to meet more of our animals around the farm.