Does anyone have gerbils?

[ShakeysGirl]

I seem to have temporarily lost my common sense yesterday and let the boys spend their Christmas money on a pair of gerbils! (JoyBoy and George ) i know nothing about gerbils, and have realised i'm actually quite nervous of them, we have a cage - bargin from a charity shop, water bottle, sawdust, bedding, food and bowl, wheel and chew toy.
I have an irrational fear that they are going to bite my fingers off. Any gerbil owners out there?

Anyone?

We have two - Rose and Martha!

What did you want to know? BTW, I had gerbils as a child as well as these two, and I have never known one use a wheel. Our hamster uses his all the time.

We were looking at some in Pets At Home at the weekend. The boys loved them. DD preferred the cute and tiny Roborowski (sp?) hamsters. We can't have anything like that though as we have a cat, and he would probably terrorise them by peering in the cage all the time. DH isn't keen either.

Yeah, I've often thought they'd be biters.

Gerbils only bite if theyre scared or mishandled.

Weve had a hamster since just before Xmas, and he's bitten me more than the gerbils ever have, because he's so short sighted he thinks Im food!

I find the gerbils much easier to handle than the hamster, a syrian, who seems to be all fur and no body. Gerbils are more substantial, IYKWIM!

If you get them used to being handled they shouldn't bite - giving them sunflower seeds as a treat when you handle them worked for the ones I had as a kid. One thing to watch out for is their tails - some books tell you to hold them by the tail but they don't make it clear they mean right at the base of the tail not the end - the end of their tail can actually break off, probably a way of escaping from a predator that hasn't managed to grab them all in one go...

Their wheel ought to be a solid one if possible, not a wire slatted one, again because of the tail - it could get caught up. But after a while they will chew through a plastic wheel, so it won't last forever... ours loved anything they could chew through, and loved going through tubes from loo roll and kitchen roll. They're way more fun than hamsters, because they're not nocturnal so they're active mostly in the daytime.

ours love eating the occasional wooden spoon! when they've done enough loo roll and kitchen roll shredding!

they love their wheel and are very cute

we have 3 gerbils, Thomas, Graham and Rueben!

they're lovely although they belong to the girls and DH i don't do cage cleaning!

they're better for children as they're awake during the day naturally and therefore aren't grumpy and like to be handled during the day. They can chew for england so watch out for holes in cages. ours eat anything put in there cage so we have now switched to the tunnels and huts made out of food for them which seem to last longer because they aren;t just chewing them like the plastic tunnels.

Ok, we now have 4 gerbils, the doctor and the master arrived today.

According to the shop they are about 8 weeks old, and they are already very happy to be handled.

hmmmm. I had gerbils as a child

Did you see the doctor about that?