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Post by LilyandDaisy on Feb 1, 2023 6:28:47 GMT -8
My female gerbils Astra and Twiglet are nearly 10 months old now. Twiglet is much bigger than Astra (86g vs 70g) and was always dominant from the beginning. Astra could sometimes get a bit big for her boots but Twiglet always put her in her place and that was the end of it. Recently I've noticed some tension between them.
A couple of weeks ago Astra started being quite pushy and "annoying" with Twiglet and this would sometimes result in a kind of false chase where Twiglet rushes at Astra to chase her off and then leaves it at that. At first I thought Astra might be in heat and winding Twiglet up, but when it continued to the third night I was more worried. Also on the third night I saw Astra mount Twiglet and groom her face, and generally be a bully, while Twiglet seemed unwilling to defend herself despite clearly being big enough. I felt that the topper and its platforms might be contributing so I moved them to a small (60cm) tank for a week. During that week they were completely fine. Then I moved them back to the main cage and the issues started up again. Today I heard running noises from their tunnels and saw the gerbils in a tight corner with Astra bullying Twiglet. I removed all the topper platforms, and reduced the tank to just shallowish bedding (they can dig but not really burrow) and no houses or tunnels.
I think something is going on between them and a simpler enclosure might be helpful. I just hope they will get through this and I won't have to separate them.
I'm just surprised that Astra would act like this when she's so much smaller than Twiglet? Astra hasn't even gained weight or grown recently. She lost some weight the other week because she injured her mouth but she recovered and regained the weight, and it's roughly since then the problems have been occurring.
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Post by icecontroller2529 on Feb 1, 2023 9:17:41 GMT -8
Sorry to hear about this.
Good luck with those two, I hope they will calm down. Please keep us updated.
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Post by Markpd on Feb 1, 2023 13:16:13 GMT -8
Hmm, troubling, sorry to hear this too, IIRC they are about the same age my boys were when things started going south.... Hopefully your girls will settle down soon. Will also be interesting to see if they settle down in the main tank without the toppers.
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Post by LilyandDaisy on Feb 1, 2023 13:28:08 GMT -8
So far they have been fine in just the main tank, which is what I expected. I think the topper may have been an issue. I have a sense that Astra believed that the rules in terms of who is in charge were slightly different between the main tank and the topper.
I don't know if large and complicated enclosures combined with adolescent gerbils may be a bad combination? When Lily and Daisy moved into this enclosure with the topper they were already 18 months old so quite settled together and had grown out of adolescent/young adult hormones.
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Post by Markpd on Feb 1, 2023 13:40:50 GMT -8
Could be, I remember little tussles sometimes between Blake and Avon after Blake returned from the sandpen, or when Avon was 2nd into the sandpen.
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Post by icecontroller2529 on Feb 2, 2023 9:09:22 GMT -8
So far they have been fine in just the main tank, which is what I expected. I think the topper may have been an issue. I have a sense that Astra believed that the rules in terms of who is in charge were slightly different between the main tank and the topper. I don't know if large and complicated enclosures combined with adolescent gerbils may be a bad combination? When Lily and Daisy moved into this enclosure with the topper they were already 18 months old so quite settled together and had grown out of adolescent/young adult hormones. I'm not the one to judge, given my lack of experience, but at the moment it seems to me that this is an important point. The more stimuli, the higher the risk of trouble. My idea of an ideal enclosure at this point: One "room" with bedding material, with one plateau for a wheel and one plateau for a sandbath, the plateaus for keeping the wheel/sandbath clean. Max one wooden bendy bridge underground. Lots of wooden sticks for gnawing. Lots of tissue. Two water bottles. That's it. Oh, and when I said "a wheel" I meant two wheels. How are Astra and Twiglet doing now?
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Post by icecontroller2529 on Feb 2, 2023 9:11:33 GMT -8
Could be, I remember little tussles sometimes between Blake and Avon after Blake returned from the sandpen, or when Avon was 2nd into the sandpen. That's interesting. I remember reading about trouble when gerbils get play time outside their enclosures. We need to watch this more.
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Post by LilyandDaisy on Feb 2, 2023 9:45:05 GMT -8
I've spoken to their breeder and she said something similar about the size of the enclosure. I don't think it's that large enclosures cause problems per se, only that where problems already exist, they can be amplified by large and complex enclosures and some time in a smaller, simpler enclosure can be helpful. It seems the easier it is to distinguish different sections of the enclosure, the higher the risk. So separate enclosures connected by tubes are obviously a risk as it already widely known, but so are shelves and platforms within a topper. That doesn't mean those things should never be used but used carefully.
I think a very bare enclosure can enclosure can go either way in that less things to be possessive over can be helpful, but boredom can also make some gerbils act up more because they have fewer distractions. I wonder if the current problem could be made worse by the fact that Twiglet destroyed their wheel the other day, and Astra loved the wheel, so she's probably more bored than usual.
Astra has now started doing this thing where she runs up to Twiglet and pushes her (own) head under Twiglet's, asking to be groomed I think. Twiglet doesn't seem very interested or bothered by this, unless Astra has cornered her in a tight spot. She either politely grooms Astra for a couple of seconds or pushes her away and Astra keeps demanding more until she gets bored. I'm not really sure what to make of this. She does this a few times a day and the rest of the time they're fine. I think I remember Wispa used to do this a bit when I first introduced her to Tilly, but she settled down and they lived together very peacefully until they both sadly died.
Playpens/free roaming can definitely cause issues for some gerbils. It's like how I mentioned that Astra might have believed the rules of dominance differed between the main tank and the topper. A playpen or free roaming area is a neutral territory and sometimes a subordinate gerbil will take advantage of that to try to get the upper hand. Wispa got very excited the first time I tried free roaming then, which in hindsight was too soon after they were introduced, and started harassing Tilly. But again, she settled down and they were fine.
Their main tank is still 100x50cm which is a fairly large space, so in accordance with their breeder's advice, I have moved them to a mid-sized tank, bigger than the 60cm one but smaller than the main one. I've given them a big pile of hay, one tube and two bendy bridges to keep them occupied.
I'm a bit less worried than I was yesterday. I think the topper was skewing their dynamic and without it, Astra seems less confident in herself (which in this case is a good thing, Astra has self-confidence in abundance and can afford to lose some) and Twiglet seems more confident.
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Post by Markpd on Feb 3, 2023 15:46:18 GMT -8
Wispa got very excited the first time I tried free roaming then, which in hindsight was too soon after they were introduced, and started harassing Tilly. But again, she settled down and they were fine.So how long did you leave it? And (on hindsight) how long do you think you should have left it? icecontroller2529 Yea I agree about 2 wheels ideally, as 1 wheel could be a source of conflict with some gerbils. Although my boys would usually be quite graceful in taking turns on one wheel.
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Post by LilyandDaisy on Feb 4, 2023 13:26:15 GMT -8
Wispa got very excited the first time I tried free roaming then, which in hindsight was too soon after they were introduced, and started harassing Tilly. But again, she settled down and they were fine.So how long did you leave it? And (on hindsight) how long do you think you should have left it? icecontroller2529 Yea I agree about 2 wheels ideally, as 1 wheel could be a source of conflict with some gerbils. Although my boys would usually be quite graceful in taking turns on one wheel. I can't remember but I think it was probably 2 or 3 weeks. Another couple of weeks would have been better. The photo in my signature shows Twiglet giving Astra a telling off for hogging the wheel! But usually they take turns very nicely.
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Post by Markpd on Feb 4, 2023 16:34:31 GMT -8
Lol
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Post by icecontroller2529 on Feb 7, 2023 5:24:08 GMT -8
How is it going with Astra and Twiglet?
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Post by LilyandDaisy on Feb 7, 2023 5:32:01 GMT -8
How is it going with Astra and Twiglet? They've been completely fine for a few days now. In the next day or two I'm going to take the divider out of the 75cm tank so they have the full space.
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Post by icecontroller2529 on Feb 14, 2023 11:04:59 GMT -8
Still everything good here?
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Post by LilyandDaisy on Feb 14, 2023 11:19:32 GMT -8
Still everything good here? Yes, still all fine. I can see a real difference in Twiglet's behaviour in that she's being more assertive and bold now, like a dominant gerbil should be, unlike before when she seemed to have to apologise for her presence and tiptoe around Astra whenever she was in the topper. She also seems to have gained a little weight from the smaller tank which I'm sure helps! It seems like Astra had a sudden mad idea of trying to overthrow Twiglet, but a change of environment and lots of cardboard seems to have snapped her out of it. Hopefully. I won't trust them with the topper again for a very long time, perhaps not ever. They have the whole of the 75cm tank now. Astra is getting a bit bored but I don't want to move them back to their normal 100cm tank quite yet. Perhaps in another week or two.
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