gerbils....top tips for kit / looking after etc...

Whatever you get, you will be the one emptying the sawdust and cleaning out the cage. Kids talk a good pet, but when the work is needed they alway seem to have homework/friends/… We used tube cage  was not cheap but great

we should have stopped at hamsters. Lovely creatures. Oh and nocturnal means they make noise at night.

Get a fish tank and make a gerbilarium - it’s a long time since I kept them, but I think you half-fill with a mix of compost and sawdust. It’s a more natural environment, needs less cleaning and they can make tunnels. Beware - gerbils can be very bitey.

Gerbils - happy childhood memories.

deeper soil/sawdust so they can tunnel as above is better for them but you see a lot less of them.
may be happy being handled but can still remember my older sister with her white (red) gerbil hanging from her finger after it had latched into her…

they can be noisy at night and if you put your dressing gown over the cage to keep them quiet, they’ll eat holes in it

make sure you get single sex or you’ll be inundated in no time. As they breed fast, you may get inbreds with defects.

pros is they are fun but don’t live too long if you do end up being the main carer (just off to clean out the Guinea pig who was def not my pet…)

just keep them away from Richard Gere

Been many, many years since we've had hamsters / gerbils but this is what I remember:

1. Buy two (of the same sex) because they are social animals. If possible buy two females as they are calmer together. We kept two males together for four years without issues though but then one day one decided to bite the other's hand off.

2. Gerbilariums (think someone mentioned them above) are super cool because they get to build their own tunnels. Makes them a little bit harder to handle and socialise though (they keep bolting underground if you try to pick them up to clean the cage). We transferred ours over to a cage after a couple of years.

3. They LOVE playing with toilet roll tubes.

4. Keep them in a spare room because they are noisy at night.

I'd suggest mice or rats, personally.

Rats are really cool, and super intelligent.

I like our gerbil, got more personality than previous hamsters I used to own. Got a bit of swagger about it.

The advice about keeping pairs is good, we had 2 but one died. We did rehome another and tried for ages to get them to bond but without success (had a split cage with mesh getting increasingly closer together etc.

I built my own cage, wood back and sides, perspex front on the lower section (filled with substrate for burrowing as above) and mesh above for the top two floors.

Built ladders out of wood as well which they chew but they've left them alone now. Better than the wire ones that can trap a leg. if you get a wheel get a solid one that doesn't squeak would be my advise although mine never used it. A sand bath can be good enrichment for them too.

Handle them frequently and they are fine, ours doesn't mind being picked up especially if being bribed with a sunflower or pumpkin seed.

Rotastak, sawdust and toilet roll tubes.  And one of those transparent plastic balls that they can run around the floor whilst inside to entertain the cat.

I had them as a kid and our boys has two sets of two over a few years.

Ours did shift work so not just nocturnal, more four hours on four hours off 24/7

They gnaw constantly, shred cardboard and chew timber so avoid anything plastic or with a coating. Ours ate the silicone from the old fishtank we kept them in which can't have been healthy.. Their chewing is noisy.

Ones I had never cared for wheels, they ate the first plastic one I had as a kid.

As mentioned, they do love a loo roll tube.

You'll need to keep their food clear of the litter as they chuck it everywhere and will bury their food/water bowl. We kept their food and water in bowls atop two jam jars on their sides straddled by a plank of pine which spanned the full width of the tank. They never managed to burrow out of the jam jars despite years of trying..

They can jump, so a tank will need to be tall or have a lid. This also stops the cat eating them.

They are stupidly and entertainingly inquisitive and become very tame when handled frequently. We enjoyed ours although the novelty wore off fairly quickly with our boys.

Being STW I'm not going to mention gerbils. 🙂 Meet Fatboy and Slim.

This is Zippy, I drove from Kent all the way to an RSPCA centre in Birmingham to re-home this little fellow.

Very affectionate little chaps if handled from youngsters. They will sleep on your hand and generally you can pet them a bit like a miniature dog. Lol

Degus, they can live around to almost 10 years in captivity so a long term commitment.

Diaturnal too, so you actually get to see them and they (mostly) wont keep you awake on the tread wheel.

Lovely creatures that almost have a synthesizer for a voice box, they make an incredible array of sounds.

Very social animals, you can't keep them individually.

This is their contented "chuckling" sound. (Not my degus btw)

We’ve had mice, gerbils and hamsters in the past from the local(ish) rescue centre.

All have been characters in their own way.

I’ll never forgive that bastard hamster though, for chewing his way into the bottom of the sofa …. In a different place , each time he did a runner from his cage !!

see what your local rescue centre have in before buying from Pets at home

Btw if it’s for kids, I’d recommend guinea pigs over hamster and gerbils. Less bitey and a better hand hold so less likely to be dropped. They are also insanely cute. We had many hamsters and all were great (avoid the smaller Russian- I had to fish one out of the wall once, can get in the smallest gaps). But the guinea pigs were the best. Indoors in a large cage. They used to get excited at the rustle of the sales bag as it came out of the fridge ?.

Our gerbilarium (and hamsterarium at different times)

Consisted of a fishtank with two panels on the top leaving a gap in the middle. The old cage sans tray on top ramps and ladders joining the two. Food and water on the mezzanine and the ability to close the gap when the are up or down for cleaning or socialising.

We had gerbils when I was a kid.  the lived in an old cupboard with the solid doors replaced with chicken wire.  It had effectually two stories for them, deep sawdust and plenty of space.  They made good pets

The did chew the edges of the wooden panels but so slowly that they never made their way out of the cage / cupboard and they had a couple of m2 of space to run around in.  We had them for years

Degus, they can live around to almost 10 years in captivity so a long term commitment.

I've been informed we're getting degus next time, i.e. after the current guinea pigs kick the bucket. Not able to visit our Decathlon without being dragged into the pet store a few units down, and they've had pairs of degus in for a while now. Little nutters, they always seen very interactive and curious, much more than the gerbils, hamsters or guinea pigs.

https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/pets/rodents/degus

Thanks all for your comments.  Must admit I like those degus, surely they are going to need a much bigger space than gerbils though?

Maybe we should start with gerbils though, as others have said I expect after the initial interest has worn off I'll be the one doing all the cleaning and feeding.

I have a 3d printer, so I had day dreamed about making them cool little setups and toys but sounds like they will just eat them and make themselves poorly 🙁

Maybe we should start with gerbils though,

I wouldn't.

They are fast, like really ****ing fast.

Hamsters are slow enough you can catch them before they nest in your piano

We had three degus in a home built cage that was large enough for my daughter to stand in.  Unfortunately, they were bought from a pet shop and were never handled enough and we couldn't break that cycle. Each time we went near the cage they scattered like I was a predator coming to eat them 🙁

Aside from all the comments about noise, kids losing interest and them being a bit bitey, we had a couple of females (sisters) that lived together pretty happily for a fair while in a Savic XL 'tank'.

They then had a spectacular falling out resulting in one wanting to chew the tail off the other. I had to construct a partition wall from wire mesh down the middle of the tank with one gerbil living on either side. We'd swap them over from side to side occasionally to mix their scent and tried reintroducing them a few times over the next two years.

It'd work for a month or so before they'd have another tiff and the tail would get shorter still. From memory they did mellow with age but the short life-span (two and a bit years) was not a bad thing. In the end they passed within a few days of each other which, if it weren't for the fact they seemed to hate each other for most of their lives, would have been rather profound.  Good Luck

But the guinea pigs were the best. Indoors in a large cage. They used to get excited at the rustle of the sales bag as it came out of the fridge

Their sense of smell really surprised me. Our guinea pigs live on the upstairs landing miles away from the kitchen and they start squeaking like crazy the moment I open a package of fresh basil, mint or coriander (the left over stalks are their favourite treat).

I like our gerbil, got more personality than previous hamsters I used to own. Got a bit of swagger about it.

They are stupidly and entertainingly inquisitive

This is very true and made me laugh. 😀

DT78
Free Member
Thanks all for your comments. Must admit I like those degus, surely they are going to need a much bigger space than gerbils though?

Mine have free reign over most of my bedroom for a few hours a day (I have a metal framed bed so they can't chew it or climb up onto the bed...) with a walkway section for me when they are out.

They follow me around like dogs in case I decide to give them a rare treat and would be easy to tread on. They are blisteringly fast!

Degus have very specific nutritional needs, they can't process fat or sugars and are prone to diabetes. Basically the same as chinchillas which they are related to.

Food is readily available, not expensive, you just need to know what they must not have in their diet and make sure kids don't feed them dodgy stuff when you aren't looking. Rabbit/hamster food for instance is not suitable.

This is the Degu Bible.

https://www.degutopia.co.uk/degutopiafounder.htm

Are you sure those degus aren't tribbles?

Apparently degus aren’t that well understood yet and shouldn’t be taken on unless you really know what you are doing or have access to a specialist exotic pet vet.

Don't leave their fish tank in a conservatory and go away for the weekend like I did when I was a child. Cue unexpectedly hot and sunny weekend. Rushed back but it was too late. not a pretty sight and I still have guilt nightmares about it 30 years later.

johndoh
Free Member
Apparently degus aren’t that well understood yet and shouldn’t be taken on unless you really know what you are doing or have access to a specialist exotic pet vet.

Memory a little vague on this but they're specific nutritional needs are largely due to where they evolved with an added dose of inbreeding from when someone first had the idea of making these "singing mice**" pets and sent 50 or so to the US back in the 60's. Pretty much all pet degus are reckoned to have their linage back to that original batch.

Any vet with an exotic specialist should have experience of them and basically they are a rodent, a particularly cute rodent with an amazing vocabulary of sounds but still "just" a rodent. Being classed by vets as exotic always slightly amuses me. 🙂

Fed right, allowed to run free a bit each day (in a suitable room) if possible and a nice big cage and they are pretty easy to look after to be honest and much more interesting than your average hamster or gerbil, imo anyway.

Like and pet, if you value them they can run up large vet bills just like a dog, rabbit or whatever.

Essentially though, they are very easy to look after, incredibly entertaining to watch and ridiculously cute when they chatter to each other. They actually have a really large vocabulary and a lot of research had gone into their societal structure and communication.

Like a dog or a cat though, it's a long term decision to make. You mustn't have a single degu though, they are very social animals and need at least one same sexed buddy.

** The lovely and hugely descriptive name they were given in Chile, where they live on the high pain deserts.