Post by fluffybritches on Nov 28, 2015 1:13:16 GMT -8
We have 3 Gerbils; Fluffy, Samus, and Silvie. We got them from a pet store, did our best to sex them (they all appear to be female), and set them up with a 20 gal aquarium with a cage topper. The petstore told us they were litter mates, and we've had them about a month. Cage topper has 2 platforms, no boxes, it's far less complex than a number of other setups i've seen. They have one wooden nesting box which they bury and sleep in.
Everything was going on well, until today. We tried to get all 3 out for play time, but Samus didn't want anything to do with it. So we let Fluffy and Silvie play. We use our bathtub for play time, we have a number of boxes and some bedding for them to play in, and a sand pit.
They were both rubbing all over everything much more than usual. When one of the two of them would get behind the other one, one would usually present their rear end up. Sometimes they even mounted eachother. My girlfriend and I couldn't tell if one was doing it more than the other, it seemed pretty even to us. We did notice Silvie kept chasing Fluffy out of the sand pit.
A couple of hours later, I look up and notice Fluffy has blood all over her front paw. We manage to get them all out of the cage.
Fluffy has a number of bite marks mainly on one of her sides. A little bit on the other side.
Silvie has a real bad bite on her rear leg, and her nose is a bit messed up.
Samus appears to be fine, and I couldn't find any blood on her at all. Though I'm not sure how long after the fight until I saw the blood, so she may have cleaned up.
We've cleaned the wounds as best we could, the bleeding had stopped before we got them all apart.
We put all 3 in the tub with nothing else in it, just so we could try to identify what was going on. There didn't seam to be any warning, we had seen no previous bite marks on anyone. Samus was running between both of the other girls, occasionally Silvie would come over and check out Fluffy, Fluffy just sat in her corner almost the whole time.
As soon as we removed Samus, the other two girls seemed to be acting more normal. We have all 3 of them apart until we can get them some care in the morning.
Everything i've read suggests that these kinds of fights have warning signs that lead up to them, but neither me nor my girlfriend can recall ever seeing any of them. Also i've read that usually these fights end up with one dead gerbil. But this fight stopped before that point.
Our current theory is that since they are young gerbils, this may be their first heat together. And this may have something to do with their fight. When they were in the tub together afterwards, they weren't acting like they were in heat any more and they seemed to get along just fine. Any input would be appreciated, we really don't want to give up one of the girls if we don't have to. These are not very popular animals in my area, finding a home for one of them to get introduced into would be almost impossible.
Everything was going on well, until today. We tried to get all 3 out for play time, but Samus didn't want anything to do with it. So we let Fluffy and Silvie play. We use our bathtub for play time, we have a number of boxes and some bedding for them to play in, and a sand pit.
They were both rubbing all over everything much more than usual. When one of the two of them would get behind the other one, one would usually present their rear end up. Sometimes they even mounted eachother. My girlfriend and I couldn't tell if one was doing it more than the other, it seemed pretty even to us. We did notice Silvie kept chasing Fluffy out of the sand pit.
A couple of hours later, I look up and notice Fluffy has blood all over her front paw. We manage to get them all out of the cage.
Fluffy has a number of bite marks mainly on one of her sides. A little bit on the other side.
Silvie has a real bad bite on her rear leg, and her nose is a bit messed up.
Samus appears to be fine, and I couldn't find any blood on her at all. Though I'm not sure how long after the fight until I saw the blood, so she may have cleaned up.
We've cleaned the wounds as best we could, the bleeding had stopped before we got them all apart.
We put all 3 in the tub with nothing else in it, just so we could try to identify what was going on. There didn't seam to be any warning, we had seen no previous bite marks on anyone. Samus was running between both of the other girls, occasionally Silvie would come over and check out Fluffy, Fluffy just sat in her corner almost the whole time.
As soon as we removed Samus, the other two girls seemed to be acting more normal. We have all 3 of them apart until we can get them some care in the morning.
Everything i've read suggests that these kinds of fights have warning signs that lead up to them, but neither me nor my girlfriend can recall ever seeing any of them. Also i've read that usually these fights end up with one dead gerbil. But this fight stopped before that point.
Our current theory is that since they are young gerbils, this may be their first heat together. And this may have something to do with their fight. When they were in the tub together afterwards, they weren't acting like they were in heat any more and they seemed to get along just fine. Any input would be appreciated, we really don't want to give up one of the girls if we don't have to. These are not very popular animals in my area, finding a home for one of them to get introduced into would be almost impossible.
