When the gerbils are first born they are blind, hairless, deaf and completely dependant on their mother to live. Their ears are the first thing you notict to develope. The tips unfold at about 2 to 3 days of age. The next thing you see happen is their skin takes colour, either stays pink, turns dark or has a mix of dark and pink if it is a spotted gerbil. Due to their rapid growth they are already crawling out of their nest at the age of 10 days although their mother or father will retrieve them.

They will start to immitate adult behaviour even before they open their eyes, like thumping and also shredding wood chips. When they are around 17 says they will open their eyes and start to nibble on solid food, but still rely on their mother to feed them. When they are around 25 to 28 days they will be old enough to be weaned.

They have pretty much stopped feeding from their mother at this point. If the mother and father have been left together during the birth and raising (which is recomended if planning to continue breeding) then the mother is no doubt pregnant. You should remove the babies from the cage to give the mother so bit of rest before she will have another litter. If the cage is big enough you can leave some of the babies in but not all of them because you would soon be swamped with more baby gerbils than you knew what to do with.

This canabalistic behaviour is also a sign that you are bothering the mother too often, so if she eats a few of her babies then it is best to leave her alone a bit more. It can also be a sign of a bad mother, most likly because she learned it from her mother. It may also be the father and if it is and you have to remove him it will be hard to get the mother and father to accept each other again.

If you know for sure it is the mother just wait and see what happens. She may not kill all of her pups. If the first litter is completely destroyed, give her a second chance, because she may have been a first time mother and wil not kill her second litter.

If she does kill her second litter, then there is little chance she will stop. If you are lucky and some of the litter survives don't breed from them because chances are that the baby will kill it's litter too, which it learned from it's mother or father.