For trimming a gerbil's nails...
Use sand paper. You can buy a smally playpen and line the bottom with
fine (not corse) sand paper. Give them some toys to stimulate them moving
around. That should trim down their nails a bit. Dont keep them in too long,
though...it may irritate the pads of their feet.
Hope that helps,
Jason
NEVER put sandpaper on the bottom of a cage or box. It
irritates the foot pads too much!
I use a box about 18" square and about that deep (half a meter
on a side, just a little smaller). I put full sheets of 220 grit sandpaper
edge to edge, long sides running up and down, on the SIDES of
the box, from the bottom as far up as they go.
Put some bedding in the bottom, just a little, to help sop up
any oopsies. Take a few pieces of dimensional framing
lumber (in the US, 2x4 stud ) short pieces, and put sandpaper
around them like you were making a sanding block. Put
those on the bottom of the box, along with toys and treats.
Supervise the animal at all times. Put a gerbil in there, and
allow them to scamper and play, this is a good time to interact
with the animal, for twenty minutes. Exploring everything,
standing up along the sides, and jumping up and down on
and off the sandpaper blocks, will trim the nails.
I give my animals one session a week. I use things like
cardboard tubes and crumpled balls of paper to give them
stuff to play with, that I can discard.
If there are more than one gerbil in the cage, they all go into
the playbox together.
If you have more than one group of gerbils, you can have
severe problems with smells left behind by the previous
users of the box. That will cause fighting and more in the
next ones to use it.
In that case you will then need to use a different box for
every clan that you have....
I also keep hamsters, and IF I clean out the box, put in fresh
disposable toys and a handful of bedding, then let a hamster
use the box....it seems to cover up the smell of the gerbils.
The hamster is interested in the smells, but doesn't freak out.
Then the next gerbils to use the box (once more tossing
the cardboard and that and replacing) smell hamster, and
that doesn't seem to bother them like the smell of a strange
to their clan gerbil.
The gerbils and the syrian hamsters share the larger box,
and the dwarf campbells have their own smaller lower box
for the same thing.
Almost any animal I have will 'dance' along the side, and
scamper over the blocks. If they don't dance, my holding
a treat at head height will usually convince them to stand up...
Deb
Rebel's Rodent Ranch
