As a general rule about 5 gallons per gerbil. So two in a 10 gallon, 4+
in a 20 gallon, and so on.
A clan of all males will do well in up to about 7, I've heard. I had a
clan of five (now four) that did great. (I removed one for breeding,
not due to any squabbling)
Your set up, really is not natural for gerbils. They would naturally
break off into new clans in the wild and establish new families -- each
family would have one dominate female, males, and adolescent daughters.
(From what I've read). Unless you want to turn over your whole house to
a gerbil project you soon will have stressed out, fighting gerbils,
killing one another in a tank setup where they can't get away from one
other and need to fightout out who gets to be clan matriarch.
These are the choices for clanning in captivity --
Small female groups 2-4.
Large male groups 2-7
Breeding pairs with immature gerbil pups.
I have heard of two people (co-workers children) who let their gerbil
clans "grow naturally" -- both had the same result. All was peaceful
for a while, the population got very big, and eventually they were
pretty much all killed off.
So I would recommend to you that you make a nice big clan of all the
boys. Clan in smaller groups the females, and if you want to continue
breeding set up one breeding pair.
-- Donna
ABC Gerbils
http://www.geocities.com/abcgerbils/home.html
PS -- at about five weeks you should be able to tell the boys from
visual inspection.
Dennis Blomjous wrote:
> Hello to all, I have been breeding gerbils since July last year. I
> started with a couple and they have raised three litters, currently I
> believe the female is pregnant again. I removed 2 males from the 1st
> litter, but all the others are still with their parents, so one could
> say I have a real colony(13 animals in total, 3 males, 5 females, 5
> unknown(4 weeks old). They have a big aquarium to live in (length 1
> meter) but how long will the peace last and will the youngsters start
> to breed with eachother?? Are there other people who have experiences
> with it? I feel this is the natural way for gerbils to live but I also
> know that their space is limited so I need to know how big the colony
> can grow and the age I should be removing the females. (I just read
> something about 6 months, is that so?) Should I remove the males? (I
> just read males don't have problems staying together and that they are
> monogamous). (I suppose I did wrong by taking out the 2 males from the
> 1st litter, but I was afraid they would fight with the breedingmale
> once they get mature, I just found out it's the females who cause
> fightingproblems). One could say I'm taking quite a risk but believe
> me I pay attention and would never do anything to harm them! (and
> since I am paying attention I can see if things are going well so they
> won't harm eachother).
