In memory of Cloe and Joey gerbil (Gerbils)

Member Name: mumsymary

Product:	Gerbils
Date:	07/02/04 (228 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great pet

Disadvantages: may chew everything

Gerbils In memory of Chloe and Joey and all their babies.
Chloe and Joey are the names of the pet gerbils my daughter owned many years ago. I think gerbils make a great pet for children.

Gerbils are small rodents the type we keep as pets are Mongolian gerbils. They are covered in fur, a hair that comes in a variety of colours a creamy white, golden browns, amber, darker browns greys and black they can be single coloured or their fur is multi coloured in patches.
Gerbils live for between 3 and five years ours lived for 4.
Gerbils are active both day and night time so at least they were awake in the day to watch.

Gerbils are fairly easy pets to look after.

Gerbils are sociable animals it is unfair to keep them on their own much better to keep at least 2.note though more than 2 females will not get on well together they will fight and kill each others babies, a group of males is fine though. . It can be difficult to tell the sex of gerbils (mind you my daughter found it easy) I won’t go into that here, best to find a picture /diagram somewhere to help you.

You can buy cages for gerbils but what we did was use an old large aquarium with a lid. We filled it with compost and a little hay. Gerbils are naturally a burrowing animal. We decided compost was best as then the gerbils could do what they would do in their natural environment, dig and dig tunnel their way through the compost. Our gerbils certainly made some amazing underground routes. Watching them dig was fascinating. I found they were not a smelly pet and the compost did not need changing often .
They will also need some bedding to make their nest. Hay is good for this (not straw it’s a bit scratchy.) or shredded paper is fine.

Gerbils eat seeds, nuts and grains. Pelleted gerbil food is available in most pet shops.
Gerbils in captivity do require water to drink I found a water bottle best as they knocked over a dish or filled it wi
th compost.
Gerbils love to gnaw so we used to put old toilet rolls in with ours they used to have fun with them running through them and shredding them to pieces.
To help keep their teeth in good condition I used to give then a large twig to gnaw on. This is something you do have to be careful with as gerbils chew gnaw anything IF they escape be careful they might chew through your electric wires and they do nibble fingers too
.
Gerbils are sexually mature by about 8 weeks old. Think we wanted ours to have babies so were glad when Cloe became pregnant. A gerbil’s gestation period is for about 21 t0 28 days our gerbils had several sets of babies .The size of a gerbil litter is between 3 and 7 babies. No sooner had we given babies away than Cloe was pregnant again. Baby gerbils are born bald hairs growing slowly they are not pretty babies.

Our daughter was amused the sounds Joey made when he was randy, he used to pound his feet up and down and make a lot of noise with them. Keeping gerbils certainly helped her sex education. Mind you I had to tell her male humans did not foot-pound.

Gerbils can become quite tame if handled from an early age.
They are an excellent pet for a young child easy to look after and great fun.
If you are going to keep gerbils as pets I would recommend you read a book on them .I have only given you a few details on them, all that I can remember. Cloe and Joey really made super pets , Thanks for reading Mary

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