How to feed your gerbils and watch what they eat

[ishido]

I started doing this several months ago. Instead of using a bowl (which always gets buried) and instead of scattering food around (never sure if they are actually eating enough), I decided to drop their food in a corner of the aquarium.

I basically let the food slide down my hand against the glass of the aquarium. Without fail, my gerbils will eat some and start to bury their mound. They will cover their stash of food with bedding but you can still see the "pocket" of food against the aquarium. They know exactly where it is and will dig into it when they're hungry. I actually managed to get 2-3 pockets of food after seeing if they would instinctively bury everything no matter what.

I have a food section of my aquarium which has only Carefresh Ultra and the rest is assorted bedding. They haven't mixed any of the bedding since they kick the Carefresh into the corner instead of mixing it with the other bedding.

[mice]

I use a bowl with my gerbils, when we first got them we tried just scattering the food round the tank, but they just wouldn't eat! So we bought a food bowl and then they were fine. Whenever we introduce a new item of food (normally fruit) we have to put it in their food bowl, other wise they won't touch it. I know they had a food bowl when they were at the petshop we bought them from, so maybe the just associate the bowl with food and won't have it any other way?

They never bury the food bowl, in fact the do the opposite and kick all of the wood shavings away from the food bowl so it's completly emptied of wood shavings.

[gerbil]

One thing annoying about food bowls is that gerbils scratch and dig at it all day!

[AndreaS15]

Gerbil said:

One thing annoying about food bowls is that gerbils scratch and dig at it all day!

Really? I've never had that problem.

I use bowls, and they are "up" on something away from the bedding so I can see how much and what everyone is eating.
My girls bowl is kept on the bedding floor and get's covered in bedding, but being there are 6 of them in there i have to feed them everyday, so it's not muh of a problem. Plus they eat EVERYTHING lol....

[ishido]

I tried using a bowl but it would get knocked around or buried. I usually have at least 2-4 inches of bedding in there too. I actually switched to using a coffee mug so they wouldn't kick stuff into it, but eventually they would cover the coffee mug. It made it hard to tell if they were being fed enough, or if they forgot about their food. After switching to the above method, I can tell if their little stache of food is getting low. It's really neat to see them dig into their lil store house of food