Dakota and Sons

Daddy Dakota is now, with his final batch of sons. He will live out the rest of his life with these three sons, from Dakota and Roma's second litter, you can see information on the pups here and here.

Dakota was given to me by Eddie Cope, an NGS breeder in Manchester around Easter of 2004, he was paired with my special mummy, Siena, where they were allowed to have two litters. From their first litter together, we had Roma, who was then, when she was around 8 months old paired with Dakota in March 2005 and they too had two litters. This pairing was a father-daughter pairing, and is known as line breeding, this is considered to be more 'safe' than inbreeding, which would be sibling pairings. I will be doing no more breeding in such a manner, as it would be too dangerous and so for the next generation I will get in 'new blood' if or when I decide to breed again (not sure if I will be though, so this is all hypothetical)

So, anyway...

Dakota was split-tank introduced with three sons from Roma's second litter, I kept them in there for a few hours and then allowed them to meet. As the sons were all young, the introduction was easy. But I decided I wanted to keep them split for the night, to be sure that nothing would happen whilst we were asleep.

They are all currently living happily, and the three sons are going through their first moult now and beginning to get more mature.

So, now we have:

Dakota - Dark Eyed Honey, dad of the group.

Montana - Dark Eyed Honey, son.

Sindri - Nutmeg, son. Sindri means small sparkling, and as this male was particularly small we felt the name fitted him well.

Oran- Nutmeg, son.

October 2005

I cleaned out the boys and tried the latest new bedding that I'm trying out. It seems to be better than the Aubiose as it is much less dusty and smells nicer plus hopefully it won't stink as bad as the Aubiose once the gerbils are on it for a few weeks. I've found the Aubiose is not lasting long at all before it's stinking and it's not just smelling bad, it's really bad! So the tanks are not staying clean as long so it also means I'm having to clean everyone out within a week or so again.

Anyway, here they are in their new bedding and their new big storage tub (it's not that new, they've been in it a month or so)

December 2005

The boys are doing very well, the three sons are now almost fully grown and it's getting difficult to differentiate between Montana and Dakota as they are almost exactly the same size, the only way to tell now is that Montana is darker than Dakota!

I had them out a few nights ago and boy did they go mad!! Within seconds of taking the lid off all four were jumping out of their tub - Dakota rarely ever jumps out, he's too placid! Very strange, as I'd only had them out a couple of nights before. Hehe. Some of them were over shooting the height and jumping straight out of the tub, missing the sides!

 

October 2006

Sadly Pete found Montana dead today in their tank, we don't know why or how he died, all we can assume was some sort of stroke because he was stretched out under the bedding.

Such a shame, he was gorgeous!!! I would have bred from him, but I was waiting for numbers to go down far enough before deciding to do so...

So sorry to see you go Montie.

Montana 23/05/05 - 25/10/06