Help, Need advise...

[akgerbils]

I made a thread earlier about my two Females, now I have some more questions:

One Female is about 8 months old (I believe) and the other under 10 weeks. I have had them in a split cage for about 6 or 7 days and they were getting along so great in the split cage for about 4-5 days that today that I decided to try taking the divider out. They seemed to be doing fine, running around after each other a little, seemed a little nervous, but no fighting. Then the older one came up to the younger one and started to apparently groom the younger one. She worked on her face a little bit and then went to her ear and apparently was nibbling too hard because the little one squeaked, the older one stopped for a second and then started again and again the little one squeaked, except this time she ran away, the older one followed her but the younger one was thouroghly peeved and they started to scrap so I put the divider back in. I checked out the little one and no skin was broken on her ear. They are both fine.


Any suggestions on what to do? I'm confused, they were getting along great in the split tank (never ever tryed to fight through bars) but when I took the divider out they weren't as freindly...





Thanks.

[akgerbils]

Hmm.... Now they're sleeping like, only 1 inch away from each other.... :/

[doomgerbiluk]

One of them will be dominant. The grooming is part of that. While it may have been rough the squeaking was likely to have been more 'ok I submit, your boss' than anything else.

[lizzy]

I would reccommend split caging them and switching over sides for another week then try taking the divider out.

[akgerbils]

doomgerbiluk said:

One of them will be dominant. The grooming is part of that. While it may have been rough the squeaking was likely to have been more 'ok I submit, your boss' than anything else.

So sometimes the bigger one will "Bully" the smaller one a little? I think I'm going to leave them in the split cage for about a week and next time when I try I'll let them stay in there unless they start to roll into a ball....



Thanks.

[akgerbils]

Good news, they were grooming though the divider today