Gerbil Litter Four

This is a page following the development of the third litter to be born here, the mother was Roma, Nutmeg daughter to Siena from our first litter. Roma was bred at around 7 months old, so she was a fully grown, mature female at the time.

This litter was born around lunch time on May 23rd 2005.

Roma's second litter did not go without any problems I am sad to say, by the second litter Pete and I managed to inadvertantly solve the issue by placing her and the pups in a much smaller Hagen, with as little accessories as possible. The way we understand it is that Roma did not like not being able to see her pups. So even though we did as has been scientifically researched - provided a nest box, Roma did not like it and as soon as the pups began to wander out of the nest box it caused problems to the extent where one pup was killed. How can I explain it? Well what would happen is, the pup would go exploring which Roma did not like and when she went to collect the pup it would wriggle, when it was still small she would easily be able to grab the pup and take it back but as they get bigger and older they are stronger and more difficult to control, this meant Roma would have to 'fight' with the pup. Tragically this ended up with her, well ripping the skin. I will not expand on it any further, but for anyone who may ever have this problem remove all nest boxes, toys etc and leave the tank completely bare, this way the mother can see everything that is happening. I think what also helped us was putting them in a smaller home, so she could easily see where the pups were.

Also, something else slightly weird about this litter, 2 were extremely large compared to the other three, they also seemed to be much more developed than normal. I say this because the pup who was killed opened his eyes on something like day 13 or 14. At this point I had hoped Roma would leave him alone because he could now see. Also, Kaori who was the other very large pup began her moult at a very young age, she was moulting at the same time from her Nutmeg brother from the first litter! She then also became sexually mature much earlier than her two DEH sisters from the first litter. Quite odd.

And onto the photos: