I built it... will he burrow?

[lucille]

Hey all,

   I've finished up with Jack Jr's enclosure and its HUGE.  It consists of a 40 gallon tank, a 20 gallon tank, a ten gallon tank, another random reptile tank that is 18X24X12 inches and about 6 crittertrail/habitrail type little cages.  I drilled holes in all the glass aquariums and everything is connected together with tubes that go all the way around the living room in a circle.  He spends all day zipping around the room, taunting the cats, kicking bedding and sand all over his various cages and puts in about 2-4 hours a day working his 'job' at the 'the recycling center' which is basically just habitrail ovo filled with egg cartons.  Also - his tubes take him up to a foraging zone on the kitchen counter which he loves to run up to and eat dinner alongside me and the cats!

  He seems really happy.  BUT.... He hasn't built any tunnels in the three months he's lived here... and I want to see tunnels

Is this something all gerbils will do eventually?  Or some do and others don't?  He's got between 6-12 inches of bedding in his aquariums - he will dig tunnels to get to the outlets where his tubes feed into the cages and to get to the cardboard boxes I bury for him but then he ultimately prefers to kick all the bedding down where he wants to access stuff and then mound it all up where there isn't anything going on.  I'm wondering if that's just his style... or later on maybe he'll put all that deep substrate to good use making some cool burrows?

[qtoffer]

Please please please post some pictures of this setup you described!

Easiest way to do this is to open a free Photobucket account and follow the instructions to upload some pictures from your computer. I usually resize the pictures in a photo editing program to 4in x 6in at 150 dpi resolution so they upload faster. Each picture you upload will have a unique share link that you can copy and then paste into the body of a new thread or a reply posting here on Gerbilforum.
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Arwen (F) and Eowyn (F) 11/12/2011 - 20 gallon with 20 gallon topper
Goldberry (F) 11/12/2011 - 20 gallon with 20 gallon topper

[crittercrazy]

Like Qtoffer said, pictures please! Your set-up sounds pretty sweet!

As far as the burrowing goes- what type of substrate are you giving him? Does he have hay mixed in? Some bedding doesn't work very well for tunnels- and adding hay will help.
Still, some gerbils just aren't going to do burrowing. I have had several gerbils that never did much tunneling, despite having enough bedding to do so.
He might eventually, but no way to tell for sure I'm afraid.
Can't wait for the pictures!!! (Hint hint.)

[lucille]

lol. Ok. If I was more computer savy I'd put up the video - I've been showing it to anyone who will stand still for 1 minute and 22 seconds. He's got a bunch of different substrates in his various enclosures - some are all sand, some are sand and ground coconut, there's a whole thing of shredded eco bedding paper that he likes to root around in. The foraging zone is this weird bedding that I think would actually be horrible for any rodent to live on - its like these weird soft granule pellet things by KAYTEE brand. They work out great to mix food into though and then he gets to pick around in it all. The glass aquariums (where I'd expect him to burrow) are all full of layers and mixes of shredded eco paper bedding, Carefresh Natural, and layers of hay and then I kinda pack everything down a bit as I go. It's definitely tunnel-able as I tested it out making tunnels with my hands - plus... like I said he will make a tunnel to get to something and then kick all that bedding down afterwards. Maybe it's not very supportive? Although it seems to be cause he does a little den he's carved out to sleep in up high in the bedding layers and then a short tunnel that runs underneath it. But they're short tunnels like 3-4 inches long and private - I only find out about them when I go to change the bedding - I wanna see cool tunnels all against the glass - wish Jack Jr spoke English so I could drop my own hint!

Here's some pictures:

This one is from the kitchen side of the counter.  The cage on the right is his foraging zone and he much prefers eating here several times a day over getting the food out of his dish in his main cage.  You cant see it in the picture but the cat dishes are up on the counter just a few feet away and he likes to eat with them.  He'll get his goodies and then hop into the little white ceramic pod in the right corner of the cage and chitter away happily!  If I open the door, he'll give me kisses... glad he hasn't gone totally wild in all those tunnels lol.  Next picture will be from the living room side of the counter where all these go down into 'the basement' (the 40 gallon tank)

this is the 'desert' - often, if I wake up and look at him in the middle of the day when me and the cats are usually asleep, he'll be in there going CRAZY and alternating between kicking sand all over the place and jumping all around.   He looks like he's on crack when he does that lol.

Next is the 'recycling center'.  For the last week, he's been very regular about it - he gets up and groggily uses the restroom down the hall from the pod he likes to sleep in, rubs his eyes, has a light breakfast and then goes to work breaking down one half egg carton.  He then takes a short lunch break before returning to work to break down the second half.  When he's out of things to chew on, he'll let me know by scratching his claws on the tubes next to the recycling center.  I'm saving up all his confetti to mix into his bedding during the next cage cleaning... who knows when that will be since he's meticulous about using his litter boxes - thank god - cause there's a lot of tubes!

[lucille]

And more pictures of the tubes going around the room - its hard to see as many of them go behind the furniture - he loves to dart around and taunt the cats. If the cats are sleeping and the house is totally quiet I've caught him thumping his feet to wake them up. He plays tricks on them like pretending he's going one way and then as he's heading behind the bed or something he knows the cats will automatically go to the other side anticipating him coming through.... he'll clank through the tubes loudly forward... and then turn around and tip toe back the other way as he laughs at them

I couldn't get this next one to flip right for some reason, but it's going beside the bed - you can't tell cause I took it at night but the ten gallon is butted up against a sliding glass door so he can look out the window and make side eyes at the noisy squirrel who sometimes comes to peek in our windows.  I think he enjoys being able to get a little drop of sunlight when he wants it

it rounds the corner and goes behind the head of the bed and the floor pillows and connects to the original cage I got him when I found him a few months ago - it's not a true circle yet as it doesn't actually round that last corner to connect to the kitchen because the doorway to the hall is there and I've been trying to work out a way to bring the tubes up and over across the ceiling.  I did work it out and have painted brackets to attach the tubes to the wall and ceiling - as soon as they don't smell like paint anymore it's circle time.  I keep wondering how much space is too much.... but about four days ago I took out one teensy little clear crittertrail cage like what you see in the upper left of this photo... it was a cage he never actually spent time in - he just used to play 'lava' by launching himself from one side to the other without touching the ground... so I took it out cause I needed that space for something else - and the poor guy !!!!FREAKED!!!!  He was like "HEY LADY!!! WHERES MY PRETEND LAVA PIT! I NEED IT!!!!"  now instead of the cage theres just solid tubes... he's been scratching at the tubes where it used to be and then glaring up at me pointedly lol.   He finally was in a better mood today after eating some apple for the first time - he'll probably be elated in a few days when I get the bridge over the hallway done... hopefully then he'll forgive me for taking that one piece out

So that's my gerbil mega city and also, if you happen to see my landlords, don't tell them why I was late on November and December rent lol.  It was worth it!

[crittercrazy]

Wow, just wow. That is incredible. Don't let my gerbils see- they'll expect the same from me and as it is I can barely manage to give them each 10 gallons! (That's what happens when you own 10 gerbils with more on the way, and when you occupy the smallest bedroom in the house!)
Well, all I can say is that your gerbil must be pretty darn happy! I think you should get a reward for "Pet owner of the year" or something.

[eleda]

that is a super awesome set up! but, with so much to do and so many tunnels provided, he may not feel the need to burrow much. My gerbils are horrible at building tunnels. Data once dug out this awesome batcave-like thing, but usually they just dig in the corners or generally kick the bedding all to one side of the tank. and when I put a mailing tube in there they almost stopped digging completely because they didn't need to. the tunnel provided them a way to get from their nest to their bottle "underground" so they were happy as a pair of clams. <_< i ended up taking it out next time i cleaned to mix it up and encourage digging.

so, i don't know really but in my experience a gerbil provided with a stable tunnel wont try to build his own. BUT even lab-gerbils with a provided tunnel tried to dig through their cages (with basically nothing to dig in) so...

that said, your gerbil has what may be the best living environment on the site!

PS - you could post a youtube link to the video; its not usually too hard to upload to youtube =)

[lucille]

Maybe I'll try the youtube thing - I keep trying to get video of him actually in his tunnels but all I can get is a white blur lol.

that makes sense about him maybe not feeling the need to dig with all the stable tunnels around. Its pretty cute - when he goes through certain areas in the tubes, he'll pretend like he's digging a tunnel for a few seconds and then move an inch up and pretend to dig that out and then keep inching and 'digging' for about a foot before scurrying on through.

thanks for the compliments - I think I've gone crazy with the whole enclosure to absolve my guilt over having to keep him in a cage at all. Years back I had rats that just lived out in the house with everybody else. They ate from the cat food dishes and slept in the bed or on the couch cuddled up next to the kitties. They had a tank to go back to but I never kept the lid on. One of the cats who was best buddies with one of the rats used to climb into the tank and eat the seed mix out of the rat dishes. I kept rats like that for years... but then about 6 years ago I had this pack of rats who acted and moved more like wild rats and one of my cats tried to hunt them. Shortly after that one of the cats went outside and started hunting mice and killing them - so I figured that was the end of my rodent keeping days. But then a few months ago I found Jack Jr wandering around in the wooded area by my house. He came walking right up to me and looked up at me like 'little help here please' so I figured I'd at least pick him up and bring him in so he wouldn't get eaten by owls and then try to adopt him out on craigslist or something but then after a few days with him I couldn't part with him and the rest is history.

[eleda]

aww what a nice story! i've never heard of anyone keeping rats like that - were they litterbox trained?? cuz I love the idea - how did you keep them from chewing everything up?

[lucille]

You know, I was in my early 20's at the time and kinda slovenly so I didn't much think about it lol. They must have been going back in their tank to go cause I didn't find many droppings or dried pee puddles while cleaning the house. They did nibble at the sheets on the bed so I just lived with rat nibbled sheets - but it was nothing like what a gerbil would do! In their cage instead of using some sort of store bought litter I always used bath towels washed in non scented soap - it would take them about a year to get the towels so badly chewed that they were unusable. I used a towel in Jack Jr's temporary container when I first found him and went to sleep - when I woke up it was a pile of threads lol. with rats the sheets weren't just shredded like how a gerbil would do they just had little nibble holes here and there. Other than that the only chewing incidents involved things that fell under the bed that I didn't know about and would later find. Only a few items in the years that I kept free range rats though. Once the rubber sole of a boot that fell behind the bed and another time I found this HUGE white squiggly worm looking thing in Leela's tank and took her to the vet cause I thought it was some sort of epic parasite and the vet pulled it apart and was like... 'yeah... this is glue' and sure enough I looked under the bed and a tube of eyelash adhesive was there with the end chewed open and half the glue sucked out! She was ok though thank god.

Those rats would get literally EVERYWHERE. I would wake up and see Leela running on top of the wood trim on the windows and on top of the door to my bedroom - I could never figure out how she got up there. I had a bunk bed at the time and she would climb the slippery ladder up to the top bunk and then drop down on a sleeping cat from above and scare the crap out of it lol. My house was like a zoo at some point with two rats and five cats and they would all play tag. So I'd see a cat chasing a rat down the hall and panic and then suddenly they'd turn and the cat would be fleeing as the rat pursued. The kitties thought cause they were bigger and could jump higher that they could cheat by getting up on the fridge - Leela always figured out a way to get them and then her sister Lali would follow her up there. One of the boy cats used to chase Leela and then 'tackle' her to which she willingly submitted and she would pull her hand up to her face like a distressed southern bell and squeak 'no' as he put his massive jaws around her. And then without biting down, he'd release and be like 'just kidding' and wash her face like she was a kitten and then off they'd go to the food dishes - it was a really cool experience living like that but I'm not sure I could easily find that dynamic with rats again... my first three lived like that - first a single one by himself and then after he passed on the two girls - but I picked them all out from pet shops because they sorta 'called' to me - we had chemistry right away and I couldn't leave without them even though I hadn't intended to come home with rats either of those days. Years after the girls passed on and some of the cat heard had unfortunately thinned out, my cat Skippy was depressed and I thought that getting her rats would cheer her up - so I just kinda went out and just got rats - any rats - I guess I made the mistake of choosing them more on color than on that special spark and the dynamic was never the same. They weren't interested in leaving the enclosure and they formed a rat click and only wanted to socialize with each other. They were scared of the cats and moved more like wild rodents - very darty and Killer ended up wounding one because it triggered instincts in her that she'd never acted on before. So I had to close up the rat pen - there were six rats living in a six story wire cage and they were basically like 'thanks for the food lady... now GO AWAY we only talk to rats' and it went on like that for years just kinda feeding them and keeping them clean. It was a very strange time - I fed them on an organic diet and tried to do the best I could for them... but they all died off slowly over the course of two years from some mysterious bacterial infection in the blood that didn't respond to medications. I was so traumatized over the whole thing I swore I'd never keep rodents again - that all was maybe 6 years ago. And then suddenly, there was Jack Jr in the woods lol. I'm so glad we found each other and I could be happier with him! I notice my two remaining cats are calmer and much happier with him around too and it's cute how they interact and have nearly the same dynamics as they did with rats years ago, but through the enclosure : )

[lucille]

Dec 12, 2014 16:16:02 GMT -8 crittercrazy said:

Wow, just wow. That is incredible. Don't let my gerbils see- they'll expect the same from me and as it is I can barely manage to give them each 10 gallons! (That's what happens when you own 10 gerbils with more on the way, and when you occupy the smallest bedroom in the house!)
Well, all I can say is that your gerbil must be pretty darn happy! I think you should get a reward for "Pet owner of the year" or something.

I just reread your post up there Crittercrazy - holy cow! 10 gerbils is a lot to look after - I don't know how you do it. I pretty much hit my limit with the six rats and felt like I was a slave whose only job was to clean up rat pee at that point lol.  I commend you for giving that many gerbils a safe and good life  - that's a lot of work on your hands! 

[gerbillover9612]

Oh goodness that set up is wonderful! I bet its difficult to clean though :') or is he good and doesnt poo and pee in the tubes?? xx

[lucille]

oh yeah - he started using a litter box early on when the set up was still small - otherwise I wouldn't have dreamed of it lol. He will put one little turd here and there along the tubes to mark his territory I think - because if I take it out he'll put another one right back in the same spot but then after that he doesn't keep adding to it. When I do need to clean it cause the hair he sheds and the substrates he tracks in start to build up I have some extra tubes on hand and so I reconstruct one segment and then swap it out dirty for clean that way I don't have to re-imagine the tube configuration every time - saves a lot of time and effort

[gerbillover9612]

Ahhh okay hah!! :') Oh that is a good idea!! xx

[crittercrazy]

Dec 14, 2014 6:35:38 GMT -8 lucille said:

Dec 12, 2014 16:16:02 GMT -8 crittercrazy said:

Wow, just wow. That is incredible. Don't let my gerbils see- they'll expect the same from me and as it is I can barely manage to give them each 10 gallons! (That's what happens when you own 10 gerbils with more on the way, and when you occupy the smallest bedroom in the house!)
Well, all I can say is that your gerbil must be pretty darn happy! I think you should get a reward for "Pet owner of the year" or something.

I just reread your post up there Crittercrazy - holy cow! 10 gerbils is a lot to look after - I don't know how you do it. I pretty much hit my limit with the six rats and felt like I was a slave whose only job was to clean up rat pee at that point lol.  I commend you for giving that many gerbils a safe and good life  - that's a lot of work on your hands! 

Ha ha lol,  it is a lot of work!  And actually,  I wasn't thinking clearly. . .  I had 12 gerbils when I made that post.  I now have another litter of 4-5 (just born this morning so haven't gotten a for-sure head count) so now I have 16 or 17.
That's cool about the rats-  I never would have thought that would work.  I would have expected them to get into something you couldn't get them out of,  hide constantly,  etc. 
Once again,  way to go on the awesome set-up.