so this is my corrections to Aqualand Gerbil info:
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Breeding Colony: One male plus one or two females
This is a good way to have not just a single dead gerbil, but dead gerbil pups. Knowing breeders it is highly found to do a breeding colony. Females are the territorial sex, and in the wild only the main female will breed, her daughters actually have their hormones suppressed so they come into breeding age later. But even if both females and the male got along and both gave birth, if they didn't fight each other for the pups they would use up most of their energy stealing pups from the other and the pups would die because they aren't being fed.
the best way to breed is to have 1 male and 1 female.
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Diggers. You cannot keep a gerbil from digging in the litter like a crazed freakazoid unless you duct tape his little legs together. He will dig in all areas of his cage, covering his food dish (and water dish if you’re crazy enough not to use a water bottle). He’s not really trying to cover his food dish,
he’s just trying to burrow his way back to Mongolia. This litter-throwing characteristic is another reason we prefer the larger pet blocks to seed diets. Seeds get mixed into their litter.
1.) Gerbils that have stereotypical digging (Corners of things) is doing so cause he can't burrow, upping how much bedding there is and giving a good 4-6 inches of bedding can curb this behavior. Gerbils can have a HUGE (40-50 for a pair) and only 2 inches of bedding and they will still dig in corners. but given a tiny (10gallon for a pair) with it half way filled with bedding... they wont go for the corners.
2.) There is nothing wrong with food getting mixed in the bedding, scatter feeding is a wonderful way to have them work their minds and find their food like in the wild.
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Litter. You need an “absorber” on the floor of your gerbil cage. We recommend all litters except cedar. We much prefer pine, aspen, or ground corn cobs. You need to change their litter weekly. Dirty litter encourages disease problems, even if it doesn’t stink.
Pine is a no no... Corn cob can cause feet issues. They really need a litter that they can dig in. Aspen + hay or Carefresh + hay works very nicely.
changing bedding weekly depends on the type of cage... and if the gerbils have a bathroom area.
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Pets with Handles. Some sources say gerbils picked up by their tails are in danger of their tail’s skin peeling off.
We’ve picked up thousands of gerbils by these handy little handles without skinning their tails. Your gerbil won’t love you for picking him up by the tail, but he won’t lose it either.
They have been yelled at already by tons of people for this. but I this really pisses me off. Tails are fragile things, sure the very base is stronger than further down the tail, but it really shouldn't be how you want to pick them up...
I have had one gerbil with a kink in his tail, it wasn't bad enough to break it off, but he had less balance than Jethro, and that was due to him not being able to use is tail completely.
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Take them out of the same group or
they will always fight – sometimes to the death.
if introductions are done properly and carefully, the bolded can be avoided, though some gerbils though fine sharing a split cage, will never want to share an unsplit cage, but this is fine.
Also this site has NOTHING NOTHING on split caging *bangs head against desk*
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We cannot sex young gerbils. Most male rodents sport huge testicles. Male gerbils are not as obvious. His testicles are still less apparent at older ages.
Um... yeah you can.
oh look here....they can be sexed at 10 days old if you know what you are doing. It also shows an adult male vs an adult female.... the adult still seems to be obvious even if it isn't male rat size coconuts hanging from him.
(My pet store acutally wasn't sure if D and M were males.... i took one look when they were 2 months old an way liek "uh yeah... they are males."
wink
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Do They Like Wheels? Wheels are great for hamsters. Wheels are only semi-great for gerbils. The spokes in the wheels can catch their long tails and break them. Put some ugly duct tape on the outside of the spokes to keep their tails from catching. Then put litter on the sticky part they will be running on.
two words: Silent Spinner
"oh but they can't have palstic in their cage!"....silent spinners are thick enough that it would take a long time for them to make a dent.
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Gerbils are diurnal.......won’t run their squeaky wheel at all hours of the night
No they are not in captivity they are crepuscular. And they WILL run on their wheels when they feel like it even if it is in the middle of the night when you go to bed or during the day when you are taking a nap.
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"Kathy Evans, June 12, 2006
You have a dangerously wrong piece of info on your gerbil care fact sheet. In Gerbils the females are the dominant ones. If you put more than one female with a male they will KILL each other. Please change this. Also at the bottom of your sheet, you tell them to leave the male in but you do not tell them that they will mate again and again and again and have babies every 5 weeks until the female reaches 20 to 30 months old. Also you tell them they can not put a female back in. Yes they can with the split cage method. No gerbils should meet each other for the first time without the split cage method. They will kill each other if over the age of 10 weeks.
Please visit the AGS website:
http://www.agsgerbils.org and go to the care guide for proper information. Due to improper information we see too many newbies come to us asking why their gerbils died or one killed the other or why their one lone gerbil is so depressed.
I would greatly appreciate it if you would fix these simple and way too common errors on your sheet so that the proper info gets to people purchasing gerbils. Thank you very much"
A: I'm not too sure exactly how dangerous the page is, but I'll make your suggested corrections within the next two or three days. LA
She points out some very good issues with "LA's" page... and really didn't want to touch on the male in thing....