Guess What, More Baby Gerbil Pix

[major_clanger]

About six days old now, and the first hint of fur starting to appear. Having reassured ourselves from several books and websites that yes, you can handle baby gerbils without too much hazard to them (or the state of mind of their parents) we carefully extracted them to see if we could tell the sexes apart yet. Answer: no, not so far, although a couple had what might be tiny nipples and so may be females. They're definitely going to be a mixed bunch in term of colour though; hardly surprising as their parents are almost certainly siblings so recessive genes will be being expressed in the offspring.








MC

Comments

Who will buy...

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

... my wonderful gerbils?

Not Pets At Home, that's looking pretty certain. They will take the babies, as they were born because they said a girl gerbil was a boy gerbil, but not till they're 10 weeks old.

Now, usually you can wean gerbils from 3-4 weeks, and rehouse them at 4-6 weeks. At any rate, you definitely need to separate the sexes by 8 weeks! But according to two branches of Pets At Home they can't take them until 10 weeks because until then "they are too weak to travel to the shop". "But hey, your in-house leaflet about Your First Gerbil says that gerbils usually arrive in-store at 5 weeks!" "The leaflet needs to be updated."

I think they have a mind-control device which programs their employees with the same stock set of phrases.

Grr.

Bug

(was going to sign off Bug_grr in tribute to Ang but it doesn't have quite the right ring to it with my name!)