Introducing gerbils

[gerbiln]

Hello,

I am writing with a request for help.
My problem is that I used to have 2 female gerbils, Molly and Spot, around 2 years old but Spot died.
Therefore i noticed that Molly is in distress and her behavior changed and i put it on loneliness so I took another female gerbil, Ninja, (around 7 months old) from a pet store. Therefore i started to introduce them with split caging and after a while i tried to remove the fence between them. Naturally they started sniffing each other and soon enough they got nose to nose and Molly ended with a bloody lip.
I decided to give them time and space and separated the aquarium again but there was a surprise. Ninja was pregnant. She gave birth to 5 new gerbils (4 male, 1 female). They are almoust 5 weeks now and it's almost time to get them away from the mom.
Through this entire time I didn`t do split caging or anything from this sort but they were all living in the separated tank so Molly and Ninja were constantly sniffing.

Today i got brave and maybe stupid again because I let them both on neutral ground and the result was that Molly still ended with bitten lip, Ninja does not seem to have blood or anything. Now I am really worried can i make this work since i have invested so much time and those baby really screwed up my plan. This week I believe I will take them to the pet store but still I have to deal with the introducing.

As I see it there are a few options:
1. Keep Ninja(the mom) and try again a split cage with Molly(the 2year old);
2. Keep the female baby and try to introduce it to Molly;
3. Keep Ninja and the female baby together and Molly in a separate tank alone(really don't want this since the whole point was to get Molly a new friend);
4. All 3 together.

I am thinking of keeping the female baby gerbil because I don't want it to live a lonely life either in a pet store or with someone.
Thank you.

Regards.

[betty]

Of course you should keep the baby female with her mother as otherwise you are creating a single gerbil for sale to someone else who will have to do a split to another single gerbil somewhere in the future. Basically you will be creating 3 single gerbils rather than just your original one. I can see how this has messed up your plans! You could of course home the mum and daughter as a pair to someone else and find yourself another single?

And for future reference, introducing gerbils in neutral territory rarely ever works in the scale of things (even if they sort of know each other through the bars) - and there is the chance that Molly and Ninja maybe won't go together anyway so will you be homing a single pup and still having 2 separate gerbils? If you do the split properly it is most likely they WILL go together - but it could still take up to (or over) 3 months...

I doubt you will have huge success introducing a mum and her daughter to another female - and personally I wouldn't even try it. What you could do though - seeing as your other female is so old, would be to introduce her to a male as she won't get pregnant at that age anyway - she might not even come into heat. I wouldn't use one of your pups though as gerbs are easier to home in pairs and you have exactly 4 males.

It is a difficult one, and there are lots of options - what are your thoughts now as it has been a few days since you posted?

[gerbiln]

It's been a while and there is some news.

The main idea until now was to give them all away so no gerbil will be alone and to get a new one for Molly. Unfortunately that won't work anymore.

Today I went to the vet to make sure on what the genders of the babies are. The result was 4 girls and 1 boy.
Considering as I can't keep the boy with Molly, do you think it would be better to keep a baby girl or Ninja, the mom, for introducing with Molly? Would a baby be accepted easier? Is there also a chance to keep two baby sisters so that when Molly dies I'm not in the same situation?

I don't want to keep the boy because I don't want to take any risks. Ninja got pregnant in the pet store with a very old male gerbil she was living with so I'm skeptical about age preventing Molly from getting into heat.

From what I know male babies don't have such a hard time being introduced to others so I'm not so worried about him.

Any thoughts on this? Especially about 3 females living together?

[crittercrazy]

Three females can live together. I have a trio of girls right now and have had them in the past. So introducing to female pups to Molly would be fine.

As Betty said, if Molly is over two years old she won't get pregnant. I know you said you were skeptical due to Ninja getting pregnant by an older male- but no need to worry. Males can can continue to father pups into their senior years. Females, however, can't.

Pups are easier to introduce, but using a proper split cage, it also shouldn't be that hard to introduce Molly and Ninja. I've done several split intros between females, none of them have taken more than two weeks. (it might take longer for you, I'm just saying that I've had a lot of success with it.)

Good luck!

[betty]

Females coming into heat isn't affected by the males and doesn't stop if the female is alone.

Also, infertile females can come into heat and mate but obviously don't get pregnant. I had a male and female together in their old age and they had sex ALL the time. No babies.

I have some male and female pairs who never mate even though the males are young as the older female doesn't come into heat. And of course I have female pairs who mate like crazy when one of them is in heat...

As for your other comment, I have had 3 females together many times, but they have always declanned at some point, usually when the youngest ones reach about 6 to 9 months old.

You certainly have a lot of options to choose from here...