Rachel,
A couple of months ago my gerbils died of the same thing. The first
one died almost instantly and the second one died the day after. I
worked hard on the second one for hours. I took her out of the cage,
cleaned it, filled it with water, scrubbed it and so on. I then took
her and doused her in water (despite what people told me), and tried
getting all of the bugs off. They are just like ticks, except that they
don't just stay attached, but crawl around. There were too many
though. They were breeding and more hatched by the minutes. I went as
far as giving her vitamins through a straw and pumping her chest gently
to get more oxygen, but the things just wouldn't stop. By the time I
had most of them gone, I picked her up and she took her last breath in
my hand. They sucked the blood out of my gerbils and they lost all of
their weight in no time and were left to skin and bones. I do not know
what they were, but they sucked blood and were everywhere. They were
climbing on the cage and in it. I blamed it on the CareFresh bedding
that I used because once I started using that all of my gerbils started
dying earleir and having problems, so i went back to the other stuff and
the ones I have now are fine. Just make sure you clean the cage and
watch very carefully.
Lillian
Rachel Coutermarsh wrote:
>
> Hi My name is Rachel. I have been on the list for a while, but just
> listening. I've learned a lot. I raise Gerbils, Rats, Mice, Hamsters and
> Guinea Pigs.
> My problem is I went to NH for 2 weeks because my Mom died, and when I
> returned I found 1 dead gerbil and 1 laying twitching all covered with little
> red bugs. He died about an hour ago. Do you know what these are? What can I
> do to save the rest of my animals?
> Rachel
