On behalf of a friend

[kirsty]

A friend of mine has 3 maale gerbils altogether and is asking the following
I have 5 male gerbils, 2 live on their own, as their partners recently died, the other 3 live together. One of the set of 3 boys, Pebbles, is quite small and thin for an adult male. Most of my boys get quite chubby, but Pebbles is on the thin side. He is active and eating well, but to me he just doesn't look 'right'. His coat isn't as glossy as the other boys either. The two he lives with are fine. He's the oldest one in the group, but certainly isn't elderly - about 2 years old I would say. He's eating and drinking fine and his teeth look ok.

Any one got any ideas?
any help is aprecated on behalf of jane thanks

[doomgerbiluk]

Look at this picture


Acorn on the right is the same age as his brother Dan, the lad on the chair. Yet Dan is chunky and Acorn is slim. He's perfectly healthy.
There is as much natural variance in gerbils as there is in humans so if a gerbil has a tendency to be lightweight then as long as he's active and eatign well don't worry.
The flip side is if he is less active, if he seems not too eat well or there are other indications soemthing may be wrong then maybe a vet trip can put your mind at rest. Meanwhile make sure he is not being outcompeted at feeding time. It is not unknown for a larger gerbil to remove all the tastiest items before the smaller gerbil gets a look in.

[AndreaS15]

I have a male with the same problem. He's and his brother have just turned 2, his brother is a good weight (but not a "big" boy) and He is just tiny like a little girl gerbil (lol don't tell him i said that LOL) He's always been this size and he'sa very active gerbil too.

\
This is Chevy.
I have female gerbils bigger then him.

What I do is give him extra hand fed treats like sunflower seeds and yogert treats by himself.

[RitzieAnn]

Sparky II is smaller than my other boys... but I've never seen a reason to worry about him. My little LCP Golden Agouti was smaller than my other girls, for a really long time before she grew. I wouldn't worry! Some more high protine treats sure wouldn't hurt though. I fed Keebler crickets when he was sick. He would still eat, but the crickets were the only thing he would gobble down.

[Sunny&Sandy]

I think it's pretty common, bc I have 4 pairs of gerbils, 2 sets of girls and 2 sets of boys, and in every pair there is one bigger gerbil and one skinny lil one.