Mis-sexed.. now what?

[maggi]

Hi,

I'm fairly certain our new 12 week old is a girl, not a boy. We got her to pair with our 1.5 year old who just lost his brother. We've been doing a split cage for two days. I'll try to get a good picture, but assuming she is a girl, What do you recommend now? I hate the idea of bringing her back, she's our pet.. Even if for only 2 days. So.. find an actual boy and another girl and have 2 setups? We currently have two large bins stacked that was a two story set up for the original two. For now, we added a mesh split to one level and blocked the path to the other level while they get to know each other. Maybe we could make the split the middle and add a 3rd bin so the boys could use one and a half and the girls use the other one and a half? Or do they need to be totally separated?

Or.. is neutering our 1.5 yo feasible? Oy... What an adventure 😁

[LilyandDaisy]

The ideal solution would be to find another male and another female and have two pairs. However the pairs would need to live fully separately. Having females in contact with a male pair is almost sure to cause conflict, and likely vice versa as well. They can live in the same room but shouldn't be within sniffing distance.

Modular type enclosures with different cages/tanks connected are not really recommended for gerbils because they can cause or contribute to declanning, because it's easy for the gerbils to claim different parts as their own territory. It does work out ok for some pairs, as you found with your previous pair, but it's a risk, especially when you're introducing unrelated gerbils. A single large space is safest. For the introduction, you'll need to use a small tank of around 60cm, with a removable wire mesh divider.

I would not count on neutering solving your issue, unfortunately. It seems like the simple solution but actually with gerbils it can complicate things further. Not all female gerbils will accept a neutered male and based on my research (when I had a single neutered male), attempting to introduce an intact and a neutered male is a very bad idea. I think in every case I found, the intact male attacked the neutered male. So while it may seem like neutering a male opens up your possibilities, in practice it narrows your possibilities because he can now only go with some females or possibly another neutered male, whereas an intact male can go with almost any other male. And of course there is the risk and expense of surgery, and finding a vet who can neuter a gerbil in the first place. So I wouldn't make neutering your first option.

[maggi]

Thank you so much! I had a feeling, all of that makes a lot of sense! The reason we had the two floors before was so the top area had toys, wheels, hides etc and the bottom had deep bedding for tunneling. I'll have to do more searching to understand how to do both on one level.. how do you keep bedding out of the wheels so they can still run?

Thank you genuinely,

[LilyandDaisy]

There are a few options:

1. A tank that is long enough that you can have a deep end for digging and a shallow end for the wheel, sand bath etc. This really only works with tanks at least 100cm long because they need a minimum amount of space to burrow in and if you try to partition down a 70cm or 80cm tank there just isn't enough space for them to make a good tunnel system.

2. A tank that is tall enough that you can have platforms to keep the wheel above the bedding. So in practice at least 50cm tall.

3. A tank topper - a barred or wire mesh cage that sits on top of a tank and can hold the wheel, sand bath etc.

[Markpd]

Platforms are also feasible in shorter cages too, you just need to make a raised roof, like this :-
(I did it to keep a decent bedding depth).