Getting a Girlfriend for Logan

[Thelodar]

Logan has been by himself since early April when he got into fights with both of his brothers. I've decided to try and introduce him to a new friend and after talking with Libby of Shawsheen River gerbils we decided it might be best to try him with an older, infertile (hopefully) female gerbil. She is going to have a girl available in early June (she's being returned) so I'm planning on bringing her home. I'm really excited about bringing home a new little one but also really nervous, this will be my first time introducing gerbils, I've always purchased them already together. I'm also nervous about having a male and female together, that will be a first as well. I plan on keeping this thread updated when I hear more and bring her home, so check back! Any advice is appreciated, I'm going to start buying stuff for a split ASAP.

[betty]

I have started pairing up males and females due to circumstance more than anything - and so far I have had great success - but then some of them are older and so probably aren't so bothered...

I had managed to pair up 2 females using the split method, but I was always quite cautious and it took me longer; but these male to female pairings seem to happen with much less effort on my part.

Over the past 6 months I have paired up 5 such pairs due to various declans and end of breeding life of my males - and all of them are still together with no issues so far - I am just hoping they won't all declan AGAIN like most of my females splits have done....

I do however have several of these pairs who have sex ALL THE TIME but no pups.... (phew). I was advised by a few breeders that unmated females over a year rarely ever get pregnant and any female over 2 years shouldn't either (obviously never say never with mother nature) but so far this has held to be true. Even with a 13 months old female who was still slim who I was considering breeding with one of my studs - sex, sex and more sex = no pups.

I have one on the go at the moment and they were grooming through the bars within 5 minutes of going in the split - but when I tried then together after 4 days, they were fine for ages until she came into heat and wouldn't stop pestering him so I put the divide back up. Normally the males oblige - but he wasn't in the mood by the look of it... Too old?

[Thelodar]

Glad to hear your male/female pairings tend to work out so well, hopefully I'll be so lucky! I was told that she's actually getting a pair of females back (mother and daughter), she will let me have one or the other for Logan. I kind of feel bad that they're going to be split up for me though

I'm hoping to go out tomorrow to buy what I need for the split.

[xxxamybxxx]

i did a male/female introduction (neutered male) and it was a piece of cake! which is pretty lucky considering my dads DIY skills at constructing the split werent up to scratch and after a few days they managed to get to the other side!... i did replit them even tho they were sleeping together but they made there nests right by the split and a few days later got over again.... and they lived happily ever after until the day they died

Amy

[Thelodar]

Glad to hear it was an easy intro for you! I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to do this split and it's driving me crazy. I don't want to glue/silicone anything to my tank because I'm afraid I'll never be able to get it all off. So I bought a small cage (a little smaller than a 10 gallon tank) and I'm planning on putting that in the 20 gallon tank without the base. One gerbil in the cage, one outside of the cage. Will that work alright? I'm a little worried they might be able to push it up and get underneath though. Also a little worried about the bar spacing because of course there aren't little squares of space but long spaces.

[betty]

If you put a cage in - which is fine - you need to make sure that you are able to access and catch the gerbil within it easily without dismantling it - as you will need to be swapping the gerbils 3 times a day - so easy access is vital.

The only other problem you might get is when you are happy that they love each other - you need to take out the split - fine so far - but if the first introduction doesn't work - you need to get the cage back in again and sometimes this can be a bit harder than taking it out what with water bottles and sawdust all banking up.

I've done it with cages like this and it worked but I find the middle divide much easier on all fronts.

[BoxRAddict]

Well any female gerbil would be a lucky lady to have a man as adorable and great as Logan is!

[Thelodar]

Brought a lovely lady home today! We ended up going with a different girl than originally planned as she wanted to continue showing the mother and thought the daughter was likely still fertile. Plus neither of us really wanted to split them up! She instead offered me a female that she had been trying to split with a different male but was being rejected. She does have ovarian cysts but the breeder says they aren't usually a big problem, they swell up and then go back down. So I'm hoping it doesn't bother her. But she's a very happy, active girl so far.

I put her and Logan in the split and they did some sniffing through the bars, nothing too concerning so far. Logan seems a bit over interested and has scent marked a bit but he hasn't tried to nip her or anything like that. She doesn't seem concerned with him at all, happy to say hi and then go on her merry way. The breeder said she was very cooperative/friendly in the split with the other male so she likely won't be the problem.

I'll keep you guys updated on their progress together and get some pics of her up soon. Her name right now is Stax but I'll probably change it, not sure to what though.

[Thelodar]

Now Logan's being a total weirdo. He usually sleeps in a nest or most often inside of a cardboard box of some sort (with bedding/nesting material inside). Well now instead he's kicked all of the bedding up away from one corner of the cage that Stax is in and is sleeping on the bare tank floor next to the cage (I walked in and thought something awful had happened because he was just lying there out in the open, but no, he's just snoozing). He's also attempted to sleep on top of the tissue box he has in there, not in it, on top of it. I guess he's a little stressed.

[Thelodar]

Here's some pictures of the lovely lady






Things are going okay. They're not overly interested in each other but if they both find themselves near the divider they will sniff noses through the bars with no attempt at nipping or trying to get at each other at all. As for nest sharing it seems they are happy using each others but whoever ends up in the cage tends to destroy the others nest just by burrowing around in there. They don't seem to be sleeping in one place very often though. They might use whatever nest there is at first but a few hours later they are sleeping somewhere else and then the next time they sleep somewhere else again. So it's hard to tell what's going on. They do still sniff around quite a bit after swapping sides and always scent mark the water bottle spouts.

[betty]

She's beautiful, I've never had a Dark Eyed Honey - they look stunning.

(I'm assuming that's what colour she is as she looks just like my REH without the eyes...)

[Thelodar]

Thanks! She actually has red eyes but my camera flash makes them glow like demon lasers so I edit the red eye out and confuse all you gerbil people, sorry. She's actually argente, looks very similar to REH, they look like they have a bit more white (The REH do). Her fur is also gray further down the shaft near the skin.

[betty]

She didn't look like my Argentes, she has such a lovely rich coat she must be Argente Golden, I'm all confused with the wrong eyes.

Please don't worry about showing her normally, you don't need to change her eyes on here, we all know what they look like in pictures, we have tons of demon eye pictures, that's what our gerbils look like!

[Thelodar]

So I tried to introduce them today and it didn't go so well, they're back in the split. At first it seemed good, they did the mouth to mouth thing (Logan going under). Logan then groomed her a bit and then they went their separate ways. Logan started digging around and she took a few steps away and then turned back and went over to Logan again and sniffed his side so he turned to her and started grooming again. He was cleaning her ear a lot and she squeaked a bit so he backed off and did his own thing. She went up to him again and he groomed her, then she groomed his head. He started grooming her again and she pulled back and went up on her hind legs, he went up too. Then she knocked him backwards and pinned him down. When he tried to get away she wouldn't let him and they started to ball up. They didn't squeak and it wasn't a super fast thing, I easily broke them up and put Logan in another tank. She thumped a bit afterwards.

I'm a little concerned there may be something wrong with her ear. I noticed like two days ago she was scratching at it then licking her foot and scratching some more. She scratches at it especially right after she wakes up. That was the ear Logan seemed to be focusing his grooming on and that's what he was doing each time she got annoyed/upset. So I'm going to keep an eye on that and see if it continues to bother her, then maybe a vet trip to see if it's an infection. I won't try them again until that's all cleared up.

[betty]

That was a fast intro.

How had they been with the swapping over beforehand? Was he sleeping in her nest or just kicking it out everytime? Or did you just go for it?