introducing baby gerbil to father

Question
We bought 2 gerbils that we thought were brothers -- turned out to be male and female, and the female became pregnant within weeks.  Mother and father were devoted to each other, and it broke our hearts to separate them, but we really weren't up for many litters.  Now we have mom in one cage with 7 babies (4 weeks) and dad alone in another.  Our plan is to keep 2 of the babies -- one female to stay with mom and a male to go with dad.  Will this work?  Dad gerbil is maybe 5 months old -- will he accept a younger gerbil son as a cage mate?  We've heard horror stories about the fathers attacking the babies...  At what age should we attempt some sort of split cage introduction?

Answer
Hi Anne

Just as a follow up.  There is a very good site: http://www.gerbilsite.com/Breeding/splittank/Splittank.html - they have some great advice on introducing gerbils that you might find worth a read.

Hope you get on OK.

Regards
Sheila



Hi Anne

The first thing is to sex and separate out the boys now.  At 4 weeks they can potentially become sexually active so they really ought to be separated sooner rather than later.  Let the girls stay with mum for a little longer - and the boys can live together in a cage on their own for a couple more weeks until they get a bit bigger.

At this stage when you are ready to let the babies go, on a daily basis for about 3-4 days swap the dad and the boy over.  This way they get used to each other's scent.  Alternatively you can just mix up their bedding.  Then clean the cage out thoroughly so that neither scent is there - then put them both in together.  Make sure they have plenty to occupy themselves with - toys, cardboard tubes etc to shred.  It really is a case of just watching them carefully and seeing how they behave.  There might be a slight power struggle initially but there should not be any fighting.  If there is then you may have to separate them permanently.  Hopefully they will start shredding together and sleeping together - then you know they should be OK.

Gerbils do live in colonies in the wild and it is a nice idea to have them in groups/pairs but if you find this doesn't work the single gerbil will be fine.  I have ended up with lots of single gerbils who were either picked on or just couldn't be introduced to others and they seemed fine - they just had a bit more of my attention.

I hope you get on OK.

Regards
Sheila