>while but I have seen no evidence of mating. I was thinking that after
>they had a litter I would then seperate males and females.
Inexperienced pairs take awhile to figure it out sometimes.
So have patience. If you have one of the pair that is experienced,
it can happen that things happen much sooner. (females being
bred at six weeks and males being able to breed a female that
young too. Someone reported a 9 week old son breeding his
mother...)
>Since I understand the dad helps with the litter would it be a
>problem to remove him too soon? I'm afraid that once she
>has a litter she will get pregnant again before i can split them.
You should count on a minimum of 2-3 litters if you let them
breed at all.
First litter you may not realize she is pregnant, until she has
the pups.
IF the male is in with her at the time she delivers, she will
be rebred by the male and she will carry again. So that is
a minimum of two litters.
As the litter that is underfoot reaches 4 1/2 weeks she will
probably have that next litter. And be rebred again.
Because it is best to wait the closer to six weeks to remove
the pups the better, she will then be carrying litter #3. The
older pups will help with the younger ones.
About five weeks old on the first litter, separate a male to
go with the father, remove them to another cage. They can
take up batchelorhood and keep each other company.
Leave a female with the mother. Remove the rest and pair
up or group up, and find them homes.
Second litter will also mature, remove on schedule and
match up and find homes for. By now litter #3 will have
happened, and you will not have any more providing you've
removed any male pups over six weeks old on time.
Wouldn't it be easier to get another male and another
female and do split cage and end up with two same sex
pairs?
>My other concern is seperating them since they have
>been together thus far.
See above.
>I'm considering getting another pair and matching
>males to females. I figure that would eliminate the potential inbreeding
problems.
And btw...I'm pretty sure she is a female...she has not testes....he
does.
It's been known that some males don't look very 'male' and
surprise, when the pups start showing.
If you get another cage and split screen dividers, and two young
and healthy gerbils right now, you can start the introductions, and
if your female does have pups, by that time if you don't notice her
being chunky and spending lots of time building elaborate nests
now, would probably be successfully introduced to her new galpal
by then, and that friend will help her raise the litter.
Regarding cleaning cages with a vacuum....I use a bagless one. It works
pretty good except it occasionally clogs the hose with clumps so I scoop
out
the bulk of it and finish with a vacuum. My cages are connected by 2.5"
flexible hoses (like the big ones you see on vacuums at the car wash so
I just shew them to the next cage.
Be very careful nobody's put a tooth into the pleats. Gerbils like
to find a good gnawing place out of your sight and proceed to
work like a maniac to get loose.
Regarding computer viruses....you do not get viruses simply by opening
an
email. You get viruses by opening an attachment to an email. A good
practice is to never open an attachment from someone you don't know or
from a
public source such as a listserv. Scan all attachments before opening.
Viruses are usually spread by files with .exe extentions. Never open an
attachment with .vbs extention.
Or an .exe
The thing about the Sircam is it grabs a random file off the host
machine and attaches that too, making itself look more legit.
A few days ago I was under siege from someone that it kept
grabbing a HUGE jpg file and that was literally foundering my
ISP's mail handling system; I had to go regularly onto the ISP
itself to check my incoming mail and delete the *@*# thing from
the incoming queue...in seven hours there was four reiterations
from the same source with the same file waiting. I had to have
the ISP block her server (before they yelled at me for getting
these huge files all the time) until she gets it cleared up.
I let the gerbil forum know because it did grab a gerbil pic
on one of the reiterations and I wanted to save someone
else from inadvertently opening it.
Deb
Rebel's Rodent Ranch
