I'm getting my first female gerbils!

[rhianna]

Hello, long time no see I haven't posted on here since 2014 and it feels weird being back. I just want to pop in and say what I've been up to lately in terms of gerbils. Currently my only gerbil is Simon. Shortly after separating him and Olaf, there was a weird health crisis thing that I posted about here. Anyways, a few weeks afterwards, Olaf passed away from something unrelated. I won't go into detail, but anyways, Simon does fine on his own. He's getting way up there in age now (he's like, 3 and a half?) so there's no point getting him a new friend and risking stressing him out even more. He seems to enjoy his own company, anyways.

But, my point is that I've decided I totally have the space and money to adopt a new pair of gerbils. I'm going for girls this time since I've always had boys. I don't know exactly when I'll be bringing them home but it'll be soon, and I plan on posting photos of them when they arrive. I cleared space and plan on moving Simon into the 10 gallon with the topper (he's in the 29gal now) so that the girls can have the bigger tank. It's been over a year since the last time I welcomed new gerbils into my home so I feel like I'm ready again! And with Simon getting older and sleeping more often, I miss having playful young spirited gerbils running around all the time. 

I think I'm going to name them after characters from Orange is the New Black. I was thinking Nicky and Lorna, or maybe Red and Vee, or Taystee and Poussey. Although I'd love to hear any other name suggestions for a pair of girls!

[catnut]

glad to hear Simon is still doing well and seems fine by himself. Soo sorry to hear about Olaf passing. RIP Olaf. I hope you can find a couple of girls-I've had more girls than boys and some have heat cycles while others' don't seem to, which can make them a bit hyper and act a bit strange but usually that only lasts afew hours at a time. I've had sweet calm girls and others' more hyper so they can vary as much as male gerbils.

Take care,

Tammy

[vexorg]

The only difference we've found is that girls cages do smell a bit more than boys, so they need cleaned out a bit sooner.

[theia]

Interesting, when we were deciding if we wanted boys or girls this time we assumed girls would be less smelly as when I had rats the male I had was twice as smelly as the two females I had, and all being rodents that seemed like a safe assumption.

We went for girls as we had only had boys previously too, biggest difference we have found is picky girls are about who they live with.

Funny story, we didn't know before getting our current girls that taking a gerbil away for several hours or a day or two could cause declanning (obviously we discovered that just before we got these girls so there won't be any mistakes there). With our previous 3 males (probably littermates but not known) I literally took one male out when visiting my (then) boyfriend so my boyfriend could meet him and play with him and kept him at my boyfriends overnight returning him to his 'brothers' sometime the next day. His brothers would act kind of like 'where on earth have you been?!?' when we returned him, sniffing him and greeting him and grooming him. We did this more than once (always with the same male)! I believe if we'd done this with females it could easily have been a very different story.