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I have 5 female gerbils, 1 is the mother of the other 4, and they have been doing something very strange. The 4 daughters, all adults, have been acting exactly like males, they are scent marking and are trying to hump their mother and then cleaning themselves. They were all in heat when they did this, I didn’t know if that might of been the cause of them doing this it seems very odd. Usually I am very smart about gerbils. Can you please tell me why my gerbils might be doing this.
Where’s the father? He should be there.
Have you ever had a breeding pair before?
I’m figuring you must already know some of what I’m going to say here?
If you still have the father, consider putting him back in the cage with the mother, and remove the girls. Yes, you’ll have more gerbil babies, until the female reaches between 14 & 17 months, but when I had unintended litters of gerbils (the cage at the shop SAID they were all males!), I called around to small independent pet shops & find one that was willing to take them pretty much for free, usually in exchange for merchandise (I always needed those green & beige wafer snacks). They can go to new homes around 6 weeks.
Gerbils are not like hamsters; they mate for life. The paired couple stay together all the time & the father helps the mother raise & supervise the pups. In fact, it’s so much work for the mother that she generally NEEDS the father’s help to keep her from getting overstressed.
With no male there, it may be confusing the gerbils, so they’re trying to compensate for having no male around.
It may drop off when the kits become adults.
If you don’t have the father, then I recommend you winnow the crowd down to 2 of the kits, so the mother will have company, & find homes for the rest. Gerbils like to have other gerbils around, they’re social.I used to breed them and yes I do still have the father but I tried putting them together again once but they just started fighting and almost killing each other. I also now a lot about breeding gerbils and I know that if you just keep constantly breeding the female she could die of overbreeding and may not have good pups. I have homes awaiting for two of my females and I plan on keeping the other 3. The second and last litter I had has never even seen their father ,besides the males, and the first litter were seperated at 6 weeks (a little while after they were weaned).
Wow. I’ve never heard of a gerbil mom who took against her husband like that. Seems unusual. None of the books or websites ever said anything about that.
Well, you seem to have it in hand.
Although, I’m not sure that regular breeding is so bad; my pair bred until Desdemona was 16 months old, I think (longer than the books said she would), and she lived to 3 years.
True, 22% of the pups she had died early of congenital deformities, but that was because Othello & Desdemona were pet-store stock & were probably siblings of siblings of siblings, badly interbred themselves, & never should have bred in the first place (but I was stuck with the situation).My female is the dominant female and is territorial, but I reintroduced them in a whole new cage neither of them "owns" yet. Also I am only 13 so my mother is the one that decides when I breed them and when I can’t. She would probably be okay with one more litter, but I have an offer for two of my females to a friend but she has to wait till her aunt moves out and I don’t know when that is going to happen. My other females are okay with newcomers and won’t mind a male and wouldn’t fight with him. I can’t have all three in with a male though because that would be about 25 pups and sometimes the females fight for the male. I don’t really like the idea of a pet store taking my pups because you don’t know who they go to and someone might buy them for snake food, but I do know of a nearby pet store that breeds the gerbils, and other animals, themselves and they take good care of them and I also like that you know where they came from.
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