The Quack Shack

[rjohns39]

Good morning/evening folks

 

[Miss Lydia]

Good Afternoon/Evening

 

[rjohns39]

Good morning / evening folks

 

[Miss Lydia]

Howdy, Everyone!

Have a Great Friday and start to your weekend.

 

[Pyxis]

Well now I have two gerbils.

Which was always the plan - except they're a male and a female. Babies, here I come again, I guess. I used to breed them years ago, so at least I know what I'm doing.

I have a female because I'm a sucker. I called a pet store about a half hour from my house to ask if they had gerbils, because Nox needs a friend (they're highly social). The woman who answered the phone said they had one. I asked the sex, and she said she had no idea. She also tried to tell me you can't put them together (lol) so I told her yes you can, I used to breed them, and I guess I'll drive over and sex it for you. She said that was fine, and that the poor thing had been there 'a long time'.

You can see where this is going. I drove all the way over there, sexed it, and it was a female. Decided I wasn't gonna leave her there and took her home aaaannddd now I'll be doing gerbil babies again, I guess.

 

[rjohns39]

Good morning / evening folks

 

[Miss Lydia]

Good Morning And hope you all have a really lovely weekend

Pyxis how often do they have babies? And how many do they have at a time? I never had gerbils even when our kids were young.

 

[Pyxis]

Good Morning And hope you all have a really lovely weekend

Pyxis how often do they have babies? And how many do they have at a time? I never had gerbils even when our kids were young.

I adore gerbils. They're better pets than hamsters. They are mostly diurnal, unlike hamsters, which means they're up during the day naturally. They can be extremely friendly towards their humans. I had my whole colony to the point that when I opened the door to the cage they would all suddenly appear to see me and line up to take a sunflower seed, haha.

Gerbils have very neat social dynamics. A pair will mate for life if they are not separated.

Pregnancy lasts about 24 days, and then the litter is usually between 1 to 8 pups. The male and female both care for the babies.

They usually have two litters back to back, so they'll mate again and time it so the second litter is born when the first is just weaned, about four to five weeks later.

What's very neat is that at this time, you still leave the previous litter with the parents. The older litter helps take care of the new babies. This is also ideal for if you ever intend to breed the babies, because they learn how to take care of pups by helping, which makes them better parents to their own first litters.

Once the female babies start hitting eight weeks old, though (which is sexual maturity), they need to be removed. Gerbil colonies are ruled by the breeding female, and she will drive off her daughters once they hit maturity. In the wild this means they go off and find their own mates. In captivity it means you need to take them out or the mother will keep attacking them trying to drive them off, but there's nowhere for them to go, obviously.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Will you sell them back to the pet stores or build a facility to house them all lol?
Thanks for all the info they sound very intertaining.

 

[duluthralphie]

Good Morning And hope you all have a really lovely weekend

Pyxis how often do they have babies? And how many do they have at a time? I never had gerbils even when our kids were young.

You had mice though, right?

Same difference.