Chewed through the split

[chriscal]

I don't know if anyone else has had something like this happen, but one of my gerbils chewed through the metal bars of an actual wire grid split.

For my diy split i picked up one of those metal wire playpens from a pet store and then i just inserted it into my current cage securing it with zipties. No holes, no room to climb over, i thought it was perfect





After Hershey passed, I decided to wait a month and pair Kitkat with a new pup, Cadbury. I had them in the split. It's been 14 hours. I woke up to Cadbury squeaking. Apparently one (or both) of them (kitkat has always been an avid chewer, demolishing almost anything) had actually chewed THROUGH the metal bars and KitKat took the opportunity to attack Cadbury.


Is there any hope for kitkat and Cadbury to match if Kitkat is willing to chew through metal to attack the former? How am i supposed to make a split cage if not even metal can keep kitkat away?

[barryozzy]

I had a gerbil chew through the bars. I tried to wrap it back together with some wire, which stopped him a little but I wasn't confident in it. I ended up just introducing the one not chewing the bar to a different gerbil. I would have tried harder to introduce the two but I already had the third gerbil anyway.
Maybe you could try getting some rabbit wire or other hardware cloth? Then he would probably have to chew out more than one bar in order to get through.

[Markpd]

I don't see how it's possible for gerbils to chew through steel mesh (unless it's really thin and they just break it?), are you sure it's not aluminium? (although it would be an odd metal to make a pen mesh from). My boys try to chew through the cheap (1/2" Screwfix) mesh I have, but they've never managed it.

You may well still be able to introduce them, but you will probably need to keep them split for longer than you otherwise would've needed to.

[chriscal]

It was the thick ish wire mesh they use on screen doors, so most likely aluminum.

So i went to ace hardware and bought some dedicated chicken wire, it worked a lot better.

[chriscal]

As far as the split goes, they've been grooming and sleeping next to each other for a few days in a row now, great signs great signs

[Markpd]

Sounds good so far

And yea, gerbils can chew through aluminium!