New Member

[Nicole Eijkenboom]

Hello Everybody,   I'm a new Gerbil owner and joined the list yesterday. I will tell you a bit about myself and the Gerbils.   My name is Nicole (aged 33) and I live in the Netherlands. I own several pets, 2 dogs, 5 ferrets (in fact they own me), 2 cavies and from yesterday 2 Gerbils. Both, the dogs and the ferrets keep me very busy. I train my own dogs and I'm a dog trainer and besides this I'm a member of the board from Stichting "De Fret", that's the Dutch Ferret Association.   A friend of me runs a cavie shelter and friends of here run an animal ambulance, (wild) hedge hog shelter and a center were other wild animals are rescued. This friend of me, here name is Tamara, owns four Gerbils, so that is were I fell in love with these wonderful animals. A few weeks ago one of the shelters took care of several Gerbils and within a week they had a real Baby-Boom! I saw a 2 week old that was critically ill. Tamara took it home and the little boy survived. That is how it began. Probably due to stress a mum attacked her own baby's. One of the little ones broke a leg. He recovered and came with an other Gerbil to my place. Both are male. Because I have no intention to breed, I wanted two from the same sex.   Well, so far about me and my Gerbils. In the shelter they separated the young males and young females. Last week they neutered all the adult males.  Now they have to find new homes for all of them, I guess it must be 40 of them or even more. I had to wait several weeks before my little ones were old enough to leave the nest. During these weeks I surfed the internet for information about Gerbils.  Everything I found was about homing, feeding, breeding, behavior etc. I tried to find some scientific information but couldn't find that. F.i. Sue mentioned that spotted and pied Gerbils tend to have more health problems. In this case, I would like to know why. In fact, this is one of the subjects I was looking for. As a member of the Ferret Association I know that several ferret colors tend to have health problems. Maybe it could be useful information for Gerbil lovers too: ferrets with white markings on the head (the colors Badger and Blaze) are known with Waardenberg Syndrome. (Most obvious in ferrets with Waardenberg Syndrome is deafness.) Waardenberg is known in several species, including humans.   In fact, I would love to know as much as possible about Gerbils, I would like to know about there inside and there outside ;o) If one of you knows were I could find some information that goes further than the basics, I would be thankful if you share it with me. :o))   My first goal is to learn from you (experienced) Gerbil owners. So, maybe I don't post a lot, but if I can help somebody, I certainly will.   I hope my English wasn't too bad ;o)   by4now, Nicole