Tipping food bowl up & covering food with bedding

[alsa]

Hi guys,
I have 3 gerbils, Jaffa, Snowdrop and Oreo. Unfortunately Oreo lives on his own now due to a nasty fight with Jaffa but this doesnt seem to bother him. The only concern i have, well not really concern, its more of a query! - Oreo keeps tipping his food bowl up so all of the food goes over my floor and i just wondered why he does this? is it because he has eaten all of the food he likes and tips it as though to say 'im not eating that'? Also Jaffa and Snowdrop, whilst they dont tip their food bowl they cover it in bedding and chewed up toilet rolls, they manage to stuff it right down the side and it doesnt matter how many times i remove it from the food bowl it just goes straight back. If anyone has any advice on this i would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks

[seedsearcher]

How big are the cages?

“Searching is half the fun: life is much more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party.” Jimmy Buffet

Comfortable Quarters for Gerbils in Research Institutions
"Scattering the food on the bedding of the cage circumvents the problems associated with the food hopper and also provides behavioral enrichment: the gerbils can now dig and search for food items in the substrate as well as carry food around and hoard it. We found that adult gerbils dedicate up to 30% of their active time to foraging for food that is scattered on the bedding of their cage. Thanks to the dry feces and concentrated urine of gerbils, the bedding doesn't become wet so quickly, and the scattered food will remain relatively clean."

Foraging games between gerbils and their predators: temporal dynamics of resource depletion and apprehension in gerbils
"The foraging game between gerbils and their predators begins with a daily pulse of seeds created by wind-blown sand and the subsequent depletion of this seed pulse by gerbils. Seeds are produced only once a year on the sand dunes of Bir Asluj in response to winter rains. This annual crop ripens through the spring, rarely lasting into the early summer. It rapidly disappears from plants and from the surface of the ground due to primary dispersal of seeds by water and wind and exploitation and secondary dispersal by migratory birds and resident birds, ants and mammals. The dispersed seeds enter the seed bank. Thereafter, seeds are made available by winds that blow nearly every afternoon. Wind creates new seed patches by uncovering, redistributing and depositing seeds in wind shadows and depressions. This sets the stage for the nightly depletion of seeds and the foraging game between gerbils and their predators."

Care to guess how I feed my gerbils?

[mimette]

In all honesty, I originally started out with food bowls in all of my tanks but quickly learned that gerbils want to hide their food and find it later when you do this. That in mind, I just removed the food bowl all together and started scatter feeding. I find they are happier doing this as it encourages foraging behavior. It also keeps them from just eating what they like and leaving the rest. My gerbils would eat everything other than the pellets in their food and even now still won't eat them which is why I'm taking to making my own food. That being said, if they continue to do this and it bothers you, remove the dish and just scatter feed them

[alsa]

Thanks guys, the house they are in has a tank at the bottom and then another 2 floors going up. When they sleep they sleep right at the top in there wooden hut, water and food is on the middle floor and in the tank bit they have tubes and other things to play with. I do scatter some food especially on a morning . They love to have some breakfast cereal especially all bran and oats so i normally open the door and put my hand in so they can take some from me and the rest i scatter in their tank. Theb only reason i have kept with the food bowls is so i can keep an eye on how much they are eating but i suppose i could easily do this with the scatter method. How much do you suggest i should scatter each day?

[seedsearcher]

It seems strange that your gerbils sleep on the upper level, I wonder why they like that hut so much. What type/brand is it and how many inches of bedding do they have? All my gerbils take their food/nesting material 'underground' into the closest burrow and then to a specific chamber.

They also have these acrylic trays I built (4 sq/ft) filled with 1-2" of sand, and this is where I scatter a tablespoon or two of food every afternoon. Everything is removed from the tray daily so the sand can be screened and no seeds are ever left behind. They don't actually eat it all though, probably 1/2 of it gets hoared and it appears to be a mix of everything. I give them extra since they appear to love searching for the seeds

[alsa]

This is a similar hut to theirs but the one they have is about 2/3 times larger:
www.petsathome.com/shop/woodlands-pickle-s-cottage-31840
They dont have the roof on though, they took this off and chewed it up. They have about 5-6 inches of bedding in the tank below. They often play down there and dig around and go and hide if they have something particulary nice to eat but alot of time if i plce any food in the tank they will come up to the door and take it from my hand and sit and eat it while i stroke their heads.

[gerbilstar]

Hm... my gerbils do the same, exept i use "Excrution"pellets, so it's easyer to find.