Housing Gerbils

Ok, I went to Petco today to buy a water bottle...and came home with my first gerbil. I have mice, rats, chinchillas, all sorts of stuff so its not like I needed another rodent. This was an adoption situation though. He is 2 months old and someone dropped him off at petco because they didn't want him So for a donation of $2.50 (it only had to be a dollar, but I thought it would be insulting to only give a dollar for him) I now have a really cute little gerbil. Well, the only rodents in my house that don't earn their keep are the chins and that is the way it will stay. I want to get him a friend or two, but I am wondering if gerbils can only be housed in pairs, or if trios are ok? Also, I feed my mice and rats Mazurii Rodent Blocks, are these suitable for gerbils? Any help would be greatly appreciated

I generally housed my gerbils in roomy aquariums, a 20 gallong long would suffice for a trio. You can put them in wire cages, but bear in mind they dig A LOT, and all of their bedding will quickly end up on the floor.

Gerbils are prone to more respiratory issues than domestic mice or rats, and require good ventilation, so a good screen top would work well. They kick up a lot of dust with their digging, hence why the ventilation is important as is the substrate that you choose.

I used aspen and it worked very well, cedar of course is a no-no. I used pine for ages with my rodents long before I'd ever heard of it being bad. So it all depends on you. Or you could go for a paper-type of substrate like Carefresh, or Life Mate Hemp bedding (which is awesome but pricey).

I fed my gerbils lab blocks because like most rodents they'll pick out the good tasting things in a seed mix and leave the nutritious ones. Plus withlab blocks, they ingest the vitamins/minerals. Most seed mixes spray that stuff on the hull of the seed, the part they don't eat, figure that out. They also love bugs, and I would give them mealworms for an occasional treat.

Since its so young, you may be able to find cage mates for it and they'll be more easily adjusted to one another. Usually the younger the better. I've heard rumours that gerbils were mostly monogamous, which I found redundant. They're rodents for goodness sakes. I've never had issues keeping a 1:2 or a 1:3, and all females being pregnant.

They love toilet paper rolls and kleenex boxes to shred in a day..and mine loved their wheel. Other than that, they're cleaner than mice and cuter too.

Good luck with him/her!

Gerblils are pretty social.. similarly to rats I think they do better with eachother then they do when they're on their own.
You'd have no problems with at least a pair or as mentioned above a male and a couple of females

I've got a question for those of you who breed rodents for your snakes? Will snakes eat gerbil pinkies and fuzzies and how common is it for people to raise gerbils to feed snakes. I've always thought that they were too "cute" to raise as food, but just wondered what others thought about it.

Well as I said, these are my first gerbils because they were illegal in CA. I have, however, raised hamsters to feed to snakes. As hamsters have HUGE teeth, I only ever fed pinks, but I had hatchlings who refused mouse pinks no matter what the scenting but ate hamster pinks without hesitation.

As for them being cute, sure they are and my breeders are treated very well and even have plastic balls for running around the house. As long as you understand their purpose from day one, feeding off babies shouldn't be a problem. Everyone finds a baby once and a while that just gets to them and that is fine, breeders need replacing on occasion anyway. I love animals, they are my life, but the food chain is a very natural thing and snakes don't really care how cute their food is. I know this sounds heartless to some people, but as far as I am concerned it is no different than eating a hamburger. Just my humble opinion.

Gerbils do not make good feeder animals due to their poor ( compared to mice) efficiency. Their litters are smaller, female gives birth to so often, they need bigger tanks.
OTOH they smell MUCH better.

sometimes a gerbil pink will entice a picky hatchling to eat when a mouse pink won't.

True.
Ball Pythons often need them too.
I'm not sure whether corn used to eat gerbils accepts mice later. It is important if snake will be sold as mice are much easier to get than gerbils (especially little ones).

I breed gerbils, and im going to let you in on something...

You should NOT try and get him with another one if he has been away from oen too long. The only way you could have him a friend was if it was a littermate that he had been with. If you add a strange male, they WILL fight to the death. The only thing you can do is get him a girlfriend. I have had gerbils for a large part of my life, and the first gerbil we got was a little female, she was with her sister but we stupidly seperated them. We tried to get her another female, from a different litter...didnt work. We then got a book and started readin adn said you can only have them with same sex litter mates unless you plan on breeding. The only reason we started breeding was because it said they need to have companionship, she slowly started dieing, it was terrible, so we went out and got her a young male, and they, well you kno.

I would suggest getting him a female, let them breed, (with gerbils you CAN keep the male in the tank and he WILL take on parental duties..its very cute) and keep a male baby with him from that breeding and a female baby with the mom and seperate them.
Only down side to this may be, we have found out that the females can store sperm and keep having babies even w/o the male. We had taken the male out of the first females cage, and she continued to have 3 litters after that. None the less, she was an awsome girl. We just had more litters than planned lol

For housing, LOL you are better off using a glass aquarium, you need a wheel (they love the wheels its so funny watching them run on it) They LOVE to chew on thing lol.

They are AWSOME rodents, and they dont smell, you can leave their cage for 1-2 weeks w/o cleaning (well spot clean the pee) and it stays perfect. And most of all, you can litterbox train them...


OR if you dont want to start breeding them, you could always get another male and litterally COVER them in baby powder, both of them and put them together in a neautral tank, they will smell the same so they will think they are brothers.

JenC said:

Only down side to this may be, we have found out that the females can store sperm and keep having babies even w/o the male. We had taken the male out of the first females cage, and she continued to have 3 litters after that.

Click to expand...

Hmm. I don't see anything quite so bad about that...
:cheers: