Introducing two younger male pups to 3yr male?

[stormgerbils]

Hello,
Sadly, a couple of days ago, one of my two gerbils, Midnight, died without showing any signs of sickness or injuries.
This has happened before, to one of my previous 5yr gerbils, but I assumed that it had been because of age. About a week after, the other 5yr gerbil passed of loneliness.
I am really worried about my remaining gerbil, Creameo, since I do not want the same thing to happen to him.
I have been thinking about introducing two male pups to him, but I am not sure whether I should introduce them using the split cage method or in a neutral territory, since I heard that it is better and easier to introduce male pups to an older male.

What should I do?

Thanks,

stormgerbils

[t1gg3er]

Sorry to hear about Midnight.

We have a litter of 8 day old pups - I think 2 boys & 2 girls. We also have 2 single senior males (Oliver & Harry) & I had the dilemma of which one to introduce the 2 boy pups to when they're old enough. Sadly Oliver has got quite poorly today so the decision has been made for me - even if he recovers I won't try to introduce a pair of annoying kids to him. So I'll be trying them with Harry.

I'll be using a split cage although I'm hoping it won't take long to get them together.

It may be best to give Creameo some time to adjust to being without Midnight before introducing any pups. And if you do get a couple of pups they should be quarantined away from Creameo for a couple of weeks to make sure they're healthy first.

Good luck with it.

[stormgerbils]

Alright, thanks. I was thinking of splitcaging 3 pups with him, or introduce one pup to him and keep the other two together. I recently moved the trio to a separate tank to give Creameo some time to adjust.

[blanknote]

I don't think it would be a good idea to separate one gerbil from the trio, as then you would have to introduce a new friend to the pup when Creameo does pass away. However, I don't remember are 1 vs 3 introductions with male gerbils successful, so you might have to separate one of them after all.

Anyway, split cage intro should be the way to go. Any other way isn't as successful, and if you let them meet without anything separating them, there is a high chance that they will fight.