From: "Ann-Marie L. Roberts" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> No, these gerbils will not be bred with each other. The female that
produced
> these two kinked tailed gerbils is no longer breeding. She was
separated
> from her mate last October. All the pups she produced (total of 40, 30
> surviving) are separated at five weeks of age, boys in one tank, girls
in
> another. To this day, I have not sexed any of them wrong.
Really, my opinions on this aren't really related to you directly,
Ann-Marie. It sounds to me like you to take very good precautions and
reasonable ones.
However, I am concerned about long-term effects. Even if you only sell
same-sex pairs and encourage your customers not to breed, there's
nothing garranteeing that these people won't go elsewhere and get two of
the opposite sex. And no garantee that the other gerbils won't also
carry this gene -- if I've seen it, and you've possibly seen it, other's
certainly could. And if this hypothetical person get a kinked tail, and
thinks "Wow, a curly-tailed gerbils. How cool. I should breed these
and sell them to pet stores!"
Yes, it's a slipperly slope argument. But it's also something that
we've seen happen many times before with other breeds. In fact, there's
a woman in the US who sells, for high prices, what she calls "twisty
cats". These are cats with a severe deformity in their front legs --
the first bone is missing or very short -- so they walk with a twisty
motion. NOT something I want to see happen with gerbils.
Michelle
Flutist
