Giving gerbils a "potty"

[horselover]

A post below got me thinking, and I didn't want to hijack their post. I'm considering trying to give my gerbils a glass mason jar to see if they will use it as a potty. Does anyone have any experience with this? Should I just stick it in anywhere? Could I move it around (I like to change their tank up every now and then for interest) or should it stay in the same spot?

Thanks!

[Jazzable]

I use a jar for mine, and it works very well.

I move it around fairly regularly and it doesn't seem to bother them. It's the flat surface that makes them want to use it as a toilet, not the position of it. Mine are in a bin cage with wooden shelves attached to the sides, so I put the jar on one of the shelves. I've experimented with putting it at the bottom, just on top of their bedding - but it always gets buried very quickly and ends up useless.

I clean the jar out every day. I just rinse it out with water and put it back in the cage. The stuff in the jar is usually liquidy enough that it rinses off very easily. Sometimes there are some sticky bits (e.g. if they kicked some shavings inside the jar or something), which I wipe off with toilet roll.

The main downside of it is that it can get smelly if you don't keep on top of cleaning it. If their waste is just distributed throughout their shavings, then it won't get smelly until it's time to clean out the cage. But I can tell when it's been a day since I cleaned the jar because there is a definite whiff when I open the lid of the cage. The positive of this is that - if you *do* clean it regularly - then the whole cage will hopefully not need cleaning so often. Plus it's possible they'll have a specific toilet spot anyway (without the jar in the cage, mine just pee on the shelves anyway), which can build up smell but still be difficult to clean.

[3LilGerbils]

I use a ceramic dish with a little chinchilla sand and they use it as a potty every time! (Wherever its moved to they always go back to use it) and coz of the sand it stops it being smelly quickly so i change the sand like once every 2 days x

[alleyj]

I'm thinking of getting mine the hamster potty from super pet since my boy uses the potty all in one corner and my girls use their food bowl. it seems worth a shot.