Gerbils really remarkable animals. But you have to be ready at once that it is necessary to get at least couple. Alone these gregarious animals miss and badly eat. And in general, gerbils are not whimsical in leaving at all. These are inhabitants of deserts and semi-deserts therefore they got used to dovolsvovatsya by small. They even go to a toilet a little and seldom therefore it is possible to clean their dwellings once in two-three weeks. Besides gerbils are very clean, are easily tamed, are mild, are not aggressive and do not demand a lot of space.
Dwelling
Gerbils can be content also with a usual metal cage of 40х50 cm in size, main that it had no trellised bottom. Gerbils often injure the pads which got between rods. It is even better to contain gerbils in capacity with glass walls, having filled in it a layer of peat, sawdust, branches or hay 20 cm thick. Then you will be able to watch how they will dig the courses, behind their life hidden from public eyes.
In order that animals could construct to themselves a nest, put them in a cage fragmentary cardboard without inscriptions or cardboard boxes for eggs. Also the wheel will be useful - these small animals are very active and like to move. But buy not a trellised, but continuous wheel.
Behavior
Perhaps, at first gerbils will hesitate, but then will quickly get used, and you will have an opportunity to communicate constantly with them. Unlike hamsters and chipmunks, gerbils have no tendency to hide and try to discover dark corners, they the most part of time are in sight of people, easily make contact: come to call, take food from hands.
As well as in the nature, in bondage the small animals are inclined to stock forages, like to train hay and a grass in small groups. If you give them a damp forage, watch that they did not reserve it, and regularly check their storerooms, and that stocks will begin to decay.
Feeding
As all rodents, gerbils love the cereals which are especially couched and wetted. Eat with pleasure bean, hay, a green grass, sunflower, beet, carrots, apples, berries. As medicine is used by pumpkin sunflower seeds, but they can be given gradually and not more often than once a week - they for gerbils strongly fat. Upon purchase find out, than they were fed to you, and at first you feed also, gradually, every ten days, you enter a new forage. It is desirable to give to animals mineral fertilizing: chalk, an egg shell and surely branches of fruit trees, a poplar or a birch that they could gnaw them and grind off teeth.
To owners for record
- Gerbils will quickly get used to you and will be tamed if you give them from delicacy hands: sunflower seeds or raisin.
- If it is necessary to catch a gerbil, you catch for a tail, raise and hold up the second hand as a support. When you play with gerbils, you sit down on a floor, these brisk small animals can escape, and it is undesirable to fall from height to them.
- Do not forget that they are called gerbils not just on someone's whim. These small animals love sand bathtubs. Surely put the container with sand in the dwelling.