>From: Tasha Rieck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> > Okay, THIS I have firsthand experience on. It's a PAIN to split pairs,
>>introduce female to female, male to male, and make new pairs from your
>>breeding pairs simply because you can't handle it>>
You know, I dunno if Ive just been darn lucky or what, But I havent had much
trouble with grouping my gerbils. I had only one difficulty so far with an
adult female siamese I bought locally about uhm, a few months ago. She was
very hostile to a new cagemate, but we eventually with ptience got her
acclimated with the chosen mate and they are fine now.
Here is how I mix and seperate my gerbils:
1. Most litters are fortunatly born around the same time. Sometime when
they are still "babies" (eg: nursing) soon as I can tell colours and genders
(bout 1 - 2 weeks age)I choose which offspring of which litters I want to
outcross to eachother. I take the ideal mate from one litter A and rub it
with bedding from the cage of litter B and then let it be raised as a
sibling of all of litter A, even though it has no relationship. Then I can
seperate out the mating pair when they are old enough to their new tank to
start their family. No introductions need to be done becase they grew up
together :)
2. I keep all females from litters together (and if there is just one or two
in a litter I will do like I described above to put them with another litter
where there are more girls. This way, all females are familiar with
eachother from birth. Then when they are old enough I move all females from
the litter to an all female cage. I have not had any problems with fighting
in such all female groups (and all male groups likewise I have no problems
with). I havent been placing females at all except for breeding for a long
time because with allthe stories I heard Ive been afraid of them turning on
eachother as they got older. But many of my females have been groups for
long long times with no problems so Ill prolly start placing female groups
now if people are interested in any of the girls when they come to get
critters.
If you plan ahead with litters and which you want in which "same gendered
group" or "mating pairs" you can do allthe introducing long before they know
you are even introducing, and the rest I guess comes naturally.
I think another key too is selection- breed girls that are more tolerant and
dont breed ones that are hostile. In other animal fancies we have the same
dominance problems in the males, and selection in breeding can make huge
differences. Everyone says male mice for example can not live with other
males- But they stop saying that when they see this giant tank I have with
about 20 male mice all living together, playing, sleeping together without a
single scratch on anyone. Took many years of selection to achieve this, but
I don't doubt it can be done in any other species.
~AG
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