How to introduce a male and female gerbil?

[urbanchiique]

Hi, i've had 2 male gerbils(Pepsi and Cola) for the past 1 and a half year and haf recently thought about breeding Pepsi. I was going to get a female to mate with him but have decided to get a pair so she wouldn't get lonely.

Now I have 2 males and 2 females but i only want Pepsi and one female to mate so how am i going to introduce them without the other 2 interfering?

I want Pepsi and the female to mate maybe just leave them together for a night and then return them to their original cages with their original cage mates. Is this possible? Will there be any downsides to this?

Also, the female will be raising her litter with her female cage mate. Is that alright?

Thanks loads

[sandy]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but females rarely do well raising pups with each other. Gerbils do best raising pups in male and female pair groups. And these are not hamsters, you can't just drop them in a date with each other and expect pups in a month.

First of all you need to decide if you are really ready to breed. Breeding entails usually not just one litter but at least two, and you can easily have three if you're not super careful. See this thread for more:

gerbilforum.proboards21.com/index.cgi?board=breedingfaq&action=display&thread=7903

Next, you have to introduce your male and female with a lengthy split-cage time, one on one. Trio splits rarely work! Two weeks or a month later, after switching them frequently back and forth, you can try to get them together, supervised. But be careful the first few hours and days, they can declan very quickly until the relationship is stable.

Meanwhile, what do you do with your partners, that you seperated? Will you breed them together too? Then are you prepared for all those pups?

You need to keep the dad in the pair situation for at least the first birth. After the birth they will mate again, but the mom needs his help and his presence for her first birth, until she becomes experienced. So you WILL have two litters. When the pups are weaned and ready to go on their own at about 5 weeks you can take them out with the dad and he will continue to care for them until they are about 6 weeks old and ready to rehome. Keep a male pup with him. Meanwhile the mom will have her second litter. Keep a female from the second litter with her when you are ready to rehome the second litter of pups.

[Vixen]

I did it this way, but would never recommend it and would proberly never do it again. I read up for 6 months had back up with knowing someone who had small animal hand rearing exsperiance, I mated my dominant female who I already had for about 6 or 7 months so knew there behaviour. They needed 2 dates of 10 mins for the mating to works.

Please think long and hard before you breed this way and make shore you know what may happen if things go wrong. witch is dead or mutalated pups, and 4 lone gerbils if the pair that are mated are not exsepted back by there partners, I was lucky and had years of animal exsperiance of my own to fall back on, I was also around pretty much all the time so if anything happened I could act fast.

breedins fun but you need to know what your getting into and do it right.

[marcia]

Ask people on here as many questions as possible. When my 2 males suddenly had a litter, the people on here were very helpful and gave me loads of advice