I may have had a little furry secret recently...

[kyrilliondaemon]

Thanks everyone, I'm glad you all like them

Serendipity I think you're right, the timing was spectacular with it! Was a lovely surprise on an otherwise hectic weekend though, it was the same weekend as Pumpkin chewed out of her detolf and we were rushing around on long journeys frantically trying to get a taller tank for her (not quite the relaxing days off I'd had in mind but there we go...)

Nope rivertamster, if we'd have been looking at rehoming any we'd not have taken in any after Bubblegum and Fixit - I must admit when the pups were born we really thought we'd got away with it, but we knew pups were a possibility and allowed for them when we planned things.

jemmalg - In my defence they joined us more slowly than it seems... Since it was a few at a time over the course of two months it doesn't seem like loads to us, at least it didn't until I was writing this thread anyway

[DrKMcK]

few=18 I like your math there. I LOVE gerbils. They were the pet that introduced me to rodents many years ago when I got my first gerbil in 1962, Henry. Henry was a wonderful little guy who was so, so tame. I didn't get into hamsters until I was an adult. Your wonderful crew make me want to run out and get a clan of gerbils. Your two black gerbils remind me of my Slate and Onyx, brothers who lived together all their lives and were lovely little guys. This is great secret!!!

[kyrilliondaemon]

You'll notice that in the title I even call it "a" little furry secret, 18 totally isn't that many... Honest...
Henry sounds like he was a fantastic gerbil DrK Slate and Onyx sound like they were lovely too. Inky and Chute are amazing, they're still quite young at the moment but are so friendly and sociable its fantastic. They're also currently the best we've got when it comes to "good destruction". We handed out entire toilet rolls recently, one per cage for every gerbil cage. Those two were down to a large pile of shredded paper in about two days despite being smaller than most of the other gerbils lol

[DrKMcK]

Originally Posted by kyrilliondaemon

You'll notice that in the title I even call it "a" little furry secret, 18 totally isn't that many... Honest...
Henry sounds like he was a fantastic gerbil DrK Slate and Onyx sound like they were lovely too. Inky and Chute are amazing, they're still quite young at the moment but are so friendly and sociable its fantastic. They're also currently the best we've got when it comes to "good destruction". We handed out entire toilet rolls recently, one per cage for every gerbil cage. Those two were down to a large pile of shredded paper in about two days despite being smaller than most of the other gerbils lol

LOL. That is the biggest thing people who've never had gerbils don't realize. Gerbils chew all their bedding...litter, toilet tissue, wood shavings, hay, and toilet rolls into the most amazing soft, fluffy bedding. One has to take care not to put too much bedding/litter/substrate in after a cage clean, because over time, after chewing it all up, a gerbil can double all that stuff, making mounds of it!

[kyrilliondaemon]

We took a load of boxes to the recycling place in March... You can imagine how we regret that now On the bright side, we have way less cardboard for recycling now
It is brilliant how well they do at creating their own bedding from whatever we hand over though

[BluerayDarkes]

Skyrocket reminds me of my very first gerbil called Misty, she got lonely though so I found her a friend who happened to be a male. He was being bullied so I had to take him home with me, he was the same colour as Mia is and I called him Toffee. Introductions went well Misty kept licking his nose which had a bit of blood on it from him being beaten up, he just squeaked the whole time she licked him. Toffee even tried to fend her off but Misty gave him a left hook, knocked him over and went back to licking. Luckily Misty was too old to have pups, didn't stop them having fun though >_>

When Misty was put to sleep due to severe illness and old age Toffee got depressed, he stopped eating, drinking and just laid in the bottom of his tank not doing anything. Afraid he would die from depression I had to find him a new companion, none of the petshops had males so I got him a black female and called her Popcorn. He perked up right away at having her with him, they didn't start mating until she was old enough and big enough.

They had a lot of litters together Toffee always helped with the pups, unlike hamsters its really hard to tell when a gerbil is pregnant you just have to wait to find out. I could never tell with Popcorn if she was pregnant or not. The colours they had were always one or two that were like Toffee, a few blacks and always two albinos. As Popcorn got older Toffee's colour stopped showing up and it was more blacks with one albino, her last litter she ever had was two black males. One of them had a fully formed hand but it always remained curled up, he couldn't move it at all but it never stopped him from doing anything. I kept the two brothers together since they were pretty close, they ended up taking turns humping one another >_>

Now I miss keeping gerbils, maybe I can convince my other half that we need some gerbils xD

[fluffydd]

Wow, what a lovely bunch of gerbils. I'm a big gerbil fan but I've never had more than 6 at one time. I have 4 at the moment. Well done for giving them all homes

[kyrilliondaemon]

Good luck convincing your OH you need gerbils then BluerayDarkes

Thanks fluffydd I'm sorry to say that Bubblegum is now living alone, she seemed to get a bit frustrated with her pups and we had to separate her from them a day or two ago for the pups safety. She's taken fairly well to life on her own but we'll probably try a split cage with Apricot at some time in the future, just incase the two lone girls do decide they'd be happier with a bit of company. We hoped Bubblegum'd keep the female pups with her but that clearly wasn't to be.
The pups are doing brilliantly though, they had started to get a little quieter and more shy but now Mums gone they're back to their confident cheery selves and thats fantastic to see We're leaving them as a group for a little longer but will split them to one cage for each gender when they get a bit older