Hi Besty,
I'd suggest that you move quickly on helping out your boy gerbil. Although it
is limited, from my gerbil experience it seems that these are hardy little
animals, but once they become unhealthy (for whatever reason) they can go
downhill pretty quickly.
I've actually never used a split cage for introduction, but for the few
introductions I done, I have used a smallest sized SAM condo habitrail within a
tank (10 or 20 gallon) and just swapped the gerbils back and forth. This cage
within a cage method has been very successful for me so far, although there is
the problem of the gerbils chewing through the plastic; when they decide it is
time for the introduction to occur. But if you did this your female would not
re-injure her nose on wire/screening.
Good luck to you, Donna A.
Betsy Martin wrote:
> Hello! Thank you for your responses to our post on the injured female
> gerbil. She is doing much better. We believe that she will fully recover.
> It will take quite some time though.
>
> We are worried about her mate. He has been very depressed since we took her
> out of the aquarium. He is not eating and will not come out of his nest
> box. He sleeps standing with his face to the wall of the nest box. He is
> getting skinny. Some of you suggested that we place the female back in the
> aquarium using a divider. But won't she hurt her nose and eye further by
> chewing on the wire divider?
>
> We have a single male that we can introduce him to or two males that we can
> introduce him too.
>
> Betsy and Polly
