Housing Of Gerbils

Gerbils are very easy to take care of. Since they live in the desert they have very dry stool and produce very little urine per day. This makes them a very good pet because it means that their cage will remain less smelly if not smelly at all.

It is best to house gerbils in an aquarium rather than in a cage. Unless you want to be cleaning around the cage just about every day then it is best to use an aquarium.

Gerbils need very little space to live in. They will survive in cage as small as 288 square inches. Now this is a little small so you should give them as much space as possible.

Cleaning your aquarium is very easy to do. It takes little effort to clean it. Giving them extra bedding is also a good idea because gerbils like to dig due to their instinct to dig burrows whenever they can.

What To Put In The Cage

All a gerbil family needs in their cage is a wheel, a place to hide and sleep, things to gnaw on and a water bottle. Anything in their cage must be protected from gnawing or be made for gnawing. Cardboard tubes are an easy inexpensive toy for a gerbil. They spend all the time it takes to completely destroyed.

Since gerbils like to burrow all the time having a water dish in the cage isn't a very good idea. As soon as you put it in there they will investigate it and will eventually bury it in a matter of hours.

Feeding gerbils

Feeding gerbils is possibly the easyest part of taking care of them. Because of their diet of seeds, vegetables and the like all you have to do is buy food with a variety of seeds in it. When you do this you want to make sure there isn't too many sunflower seed in it because gerbils can become overweight.

Besides these things you need to give gerbils things hard to gnaw on like sticks and hard nuts. This is because like all rodents, their teeth are always growing. This is because of their gnawing instinct so that they will always have clean sharp teeth. You may give gerbils vegetables some of the time but not on a regular basis, because too much will give them diarhea. If you already give them vegetables and you notice diarhea you should stop giving them any vegetables until it goes away. After it is gone you can start again with small amounts of vegetables and work your way up.

Substrate

The best kind of substrate or bedding to use for gerbils is aspen. That is because all the other shavings like pine and cedar will give off oils that will eventually lead to respitory illness. It all starts with a red nose that will become flaky and sore for the gerbil. If you are using pine and you notice your gerbil getting a red nose it is time to switch to aspen. I have notices that the black self gerbils are more susceptable to a red nose than other gerbils.