How much should my gerbil eat?

[Thea]

I was wondering how much you all think Rolo should be eating? She is a 70-80g adult female gerbil, I give her half a scoop of food a day (it is a large scoop though) which is around 10-12g. But I was shocked when I searched on google when it suggested I feed her 4g of food!! Am I feeding her WAY too much? 

She is a healthy, fairly slim girl. Definitely not overweight...? 

[betty]

It varies - but my doops (averaging around 60g) eat an average of 5g a day only - but some ate as much as 8g - and it wasn't based on their overall weight as you would have imagined.

Depending on whether Rolo hoards or not - you could run your own little experiments to find out more - but if you never find huge amounts of wasted food when you clean them out - then you must have it about right.

I only did my experiments as I was ALWAYS finding leftover bits strewn about the place at clean out time.

[Markpd]

I asked a while back how much gerbils should be fed, I was given a range of 8-12g per gerbil. I chose 10g as the midway point and I'm just regularly weighing them (2-3 weeks), they were (are?) growing though, (6mths old) so I may end up dialling back their food, so far they seemed to have levelled out at ~81/83g.
Not finding much food left on clear outs either.

[Thea]

Thanks both! Rolo never has hoarded (which I find quite helpful really!) and when it comes to her feeding time there is rarely much there. I think 10g must be pretty good for her, as she is on the upper end of average weight for a female, and weighs only a little less than yours Markpd. I fed my boys 30g of food ish (don't panic!! there was 3 of them, so 10 grams each ) and they ranged from the smallest being about 75 grams and the biggest being around 90.

As you say betty, I'll look more into her eating patterns and how much she eats to see if she needs a change. I was shocked when I searched, but relieved that it most likely isn't too much for her!!

[Markpd]

Yea 4g doesn't sound much at all, I can't say I recall a site saying that little, but my memory isn't great!
Where did you read that?

[Thea]

Well, this was what came up first thing when I searched on Google:
www.gov.gg/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=102156&p=0#:~:text=Adult%20gerbils%20will%20eat%20around

Although it says 4-10g, I was assuming they were saying 10 grams was for larger males and 4g for average females. Rolo is a pretty average female so I was thinking I was WAY overfeeding her.

[Markpd]

Interesting, and mostly good advice there, although their are a few dubious points, like they say Rotastak cages are ok despite them also saying that Gerbils should have deep bedding for burrows! And that only possibly pups under 5 weeks can be intro'd safely, when they shouldn't be separated from their parents at that age! And generally pups at least a few weeks older can be successfully intro'd.

I did a general search for how much gerbils should be fed, and it's surprisingly vague! But what did regular crop up, was 1 tablespoon of food per gerbil per day.
Strangely I didn't come across your linked document in my search, lol.

[Thea]

Yes there was mainly good advice. Another thing I slightly disagreed with is that gerbils should eat pellets as their diet, I got their point but it is a bit of a boring thing to be eating again and again for your whole life!! I think variety is good, when my boys picked out their favourites instead of feeding them only nuggets I fed them on nuggets for a few days with nothing else and they actually liked them (lol) and then fed them on their normal food again and they stopped being fussy. So there are ways around it. Anyway, off topic lol.

Also you probably didn't find it because I searched very specifically, haha. My search was 'How much food should an adult female gerbil eat daily?'

[Thea]

gerbilgerbil.tumblr.com/dietreq

this page says one teaspoon of food a day. Isn't that barely anything?? Haha

[Markpd]

Big teaspoon?

That does seem to go against the grain!

[michaeljack]

I use a 30ml cough syrup cup to feed 30gr of food per two gerbils. It varies according to the number and age of youngsters with each Mom and Dad, and the number of members in each of the community cages.