favortism of certain pups?

[gooda]

my female breeding gerbil, queen, is on her second litter. she seems to be nursing a few pups more than the others. i sometimes find that she will have three nests' at one time with pups in each nest. she did not do this with her last litter, but as i've said she is doing it now. the pups she seems to favortise over the others seem to be significantly larger in size. she has eight pups, but she mainly favortises three of them. is this common? has anyone else ever had similar behaviors as my queenie is doing?

[andrea]

We noticed when our female had 9 pups she segregated 3 of them for the first part until they were wandering around, but when she had a litter of 7 she kept them all together??

The pups seemed none the worse for the different treatment.

Andrea

[Ritzie/Admin]

I've never had that female had three nests! Sometimes a female had (accidentally or not) kicked out some pups and than she was ignoring them. But when I placed the pups back with the others, she didn't seem to favour any of them. I think she had just kicked them out while "redecoration" her nesting box and didn't know some were outside. So I cannot say that I have seen the same thing as you, Gooda!

Have you thought about placing them all with the three pups that she seems to favour?

[gooda]

i have placed them, the three favirtised, with the other five, and all seems to be well. it could have been that she just didn't realize that some were in different nests, b/c now that i have placed them all in one nest, she seems not to mind. i don't know, i was just concerned that she might let 4 to 5 die. but it does not look that way now. also i checked all eight, and all seem to be feeding well, though of course i do see a couple tha are a lot smaller than the rest. of course these could be the runts in the litter. all seems to be well now. thanks to both of you, andrea and peter.

[Ritzie/Admin]

Good to hear everything is well right now!