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Hey guys, I just got 2 gerbils today, both female and both adorable. I was severely tempted to buy a third female from the litter, but I read here that females do better in pairs and though better of it. Here's what I set them up in:  I'm about to head out and buy some more toys and a proper water bottle (the one I bought is broken), and I'll be buying them a lot more stuff to gnaw on/play with this afternoon. Any suggestions/criticisms regarding the setup? Did I buy the right kind of wheel? I heard they like to burrow so I gave them a nice big cushon of CareFresh Basic bedding that says it's gerbil safe; is this too much or too little for them to play in? For size comparison, the blue and black case in front of the cage is a bit bigger than a CD. On a side note, I'll be buying a sturdier wood nest for them later today, since the dark one (haven't named them yet) is probably going to destroy that little hut by sundown.
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Aug 25, 2012 20:52
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Minister of Chance posted:Nah, it's really not your fault. Gerbils can develop grudges from one moment to the other. Thanks for the advice, and these are the first mammals I've ever owned that were smaller than a cat, so preachy is exactly what I need. You're right about the wheel; now that you mention it I can see how that would be dangerous for them. I took it out and I'll go looking for a safe one tomorrow. The bedding is about 6 inches deep, so I might add a bit more so they can do some nice tunnels. Thanks for the tips about heavy objects, I just picked up a couple of wood houses, so I'll try that out. I don't have the sand either, so that's another thing I'll get for them in the morning. I have a small secondary cage I'm going to use for them when I'm cleaning their main cage, so I think I'll put the sand bath in that and let them have fun in it a couple times a week, that way when the time comes to clean, they'll be used to it and have something fun to do. And yeah, the one is gray on top, white on bottom. She's a little calmer than the yellow one, but will sprint from across the cage to crawl into my hand.  Since I'm studying for the CPA exam (which entails 3 hours of accounting 6 nights a week for about a year), I'm at my computer desk studying pretty much every night after work, so I can already tell that having these two inches away is going to be both extremely distracting and the best thing ever.Current state of the cage:   I bought some gerbil-safe sticks for chewing and buried them. Mostly I did it for me, because I think it looks cool, but those two love climbing onto their toys to gnaw at the tops of them. They also like pulling them out and running across the cage with them. And again, these are the first rodents I've ever owned, so please be as preachy as possible. I did a lot of research before getting them, but as evidenced by the wheel, I still have a lot to learn. e: Also, I haven't seen either of them use the water bottle yet. Do I need to teach them to use one of those that have the little metal ball at the end, or are they smart enough to figure it out themselves? e2: 6 hours later and their cage resembles a war zone. They chewed a giant chunk out of their tunnel, knocked over/snapped most of the twigs, undermined both their straw hut and their wooden hut, and managed to scatter hay and sticks everywhere. It's the most adorable war diorama ever. 
Sumac fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Aug 26, 2012 |
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Aug 25, 2012 22:33
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Minister of Chance posted:Looks great Thanks for the tips about food. I noticed after the first time I fed them that they took all the food out of the bowl and buried it, then proceeded to poop in the bowl. I'm leaving the bowl there in the hopes they keep doing that, but I'm going to sprinkle the food as you suggested. You're right, it's much more fun watching them hunt and dig for their food. The stuff I got has sunflower seeds in the kernels, but only about one seed every other tablespoon, so I'll keep an eye out for that in the future, and look into some extra protein sources. I also introduced them to the big hamster/gerbil ball. I put each one in individually and let them figure out what it did, then let them out. After two introductory trips each, now all I have to do is lower the ball into the cage and they'll race for the entrance. They like it so much that when I lower the ball into the cage to let one out, the other will usually run up and jump in before I can pull it away. e: Fixed the wording on a couple things. Sumac fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Aug 27, 2012 |
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Aug 26, 2012 19:40
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One of my gerbils figured out how to eat sunflower seeds today, and suddenly she is a hundred times tamer, although she does root around between my fingers looking for hidden seeds when I pick her up. The other is a bit dumb and hasn't quite got the hang of it yet, so she's still a little more skittish around me. e: It's the yellow one (getting to know them before naming them) that's the slower one. She also hasn't quite got the hang of the ball, but she's still eager to get in. The grey one rockets around the room, follows me, and all that jazz. The yellow one kind of goes around in a slow circle and gets stuck. At first I thought she didn't like it, but every time I have to scoop her out to get her to leave the ball and block her from jumping back in. Meanwhile the gray one has mastered the sunflower seed, the ball, and how to stack the furniture so she can jump out of her cage. Definitely not leaving the mesh top off from now on. 
Sumac fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Aug 30, 2012 |
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Aug 30, 2012 03:07
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Oh man, nobody told me that gerbils chirped when they groom each other. 
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Aug 31, 2012 03:02
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Is there any reason I shouldn't buy a bag of raw, unsalted sunflower seeds from the grocery store as treats for my gerbils? The food I'm giving them now doesn't have any in it.
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Sep 23, 2012 00:48
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What do I do with a cold, rainy Monday holiday? Build a fort for my gerbils Miso & Soy, of course!  I wanted to give them some deeper substrate to dig in without constantly burying their wheel, so I took the flexible wooden arch I bought, cut up an Amazon box, and built a retaining wall. They're having a ball tunneling in/around the cardboard (I cut arches in the bottom and buried them, and buried their wooden house in the bottom right corner of the tank, and used another box to built a big tunnel to it. You can't really see it in either picture, but I put their dust bowl above their wood house and built another wall around that so they don't sump a ton of substrate into it 30 minutes after I put it in the tank. So far they've been so occupied with it that they've barely touched their wheel today.
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Oct 8, 2012 22:07
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Bone posted:
One thing I like to do with mine is to cut up cardboard boxes and make places for them to climb, play in, and generally demolish.
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Oct 25, 2012 22:14
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Will gerbils overeat? I feed them a tablespoon of food each per day, which was recommended by the ASPCA (or something similar), but they usually just eat a couple bites then bury the rest. They probably only ever eat about 1/3 of the food I give them, then just leave the rest hidden in one corner of the cage. Right now I'm giving them a mix that doesn't have anything like sunflower seeds in it, so they don't seem to be eating just certain ingredients and ignoring all the rest, either. By the time I replace their bedding every other week, there's almost a whole handful of uneaten food back in there. Should I not be feeding them when they have a good stockpile going, or is it safe to just keep giving them the recommended amount and not worry about them getting all fat?
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Oct 31, 2012 21:28
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RazorBunny posted:Thanks for the piggy advice, guys. So much wheeking and jumping around! Definitely another animal I probably won't ever own due to allergies, though - handling her hay was killing me. I stuffed a bunch of hay down into a paper lunch sack and stuck it in a corner. When I left all I could see was the very end of her little butt poking out of the bag I have crazy hay and grass allergies, but orchard grass hay doesn't trigger them at all for me.
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Nov 21, 2012 03:18
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Zetsubou posted:Here's a quick question. It is getting pretty cold where I live so I was wondering if putting a small blanket over my gerbil's aquarium would be a good or bad idea. I imagine that they probably wouldn't like living in darkness all day and I am afraid that they might suffocate to death if I do put a blanket over it. I don't think the airflow would be good enough in that situation with an aquarium. Chances are that any blanket thin enough to allow for proper circulation would also be too thin to trap enough heat. You could try getting the Carefresh-style substrate that looks like it's made out of recycled cardboard and putting a lot more in than usual. If you don't have any other way to heat the cage, or keep the room they're in warm enough, that will probably given them more insulation than a blanket would. e: Putting something like an electric blanket over half the aquarium might work too. Sumac fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Nov 24, 2012 |
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Nov 24, 2012 23:30
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Fewd posted:That is pretty small. See if you can get a used aquarium instead of blowing money on a new one though. You can often find used ones pretty cheap when people wanna get rid of their old ones. Especially so if they are not entirely waterproof and can't be used for fishies. I just gave my big old + its stand to red cross cause no one would buy it for five bucks and red cross would come pick it up from my home for convenience. This is really good advice. I was dumb and got a longer aquarium new when I found out that I knew four different people with similarly sized ones they couldn't even give away. The best reason to get them a new cage is so you can do fun things like this to it:   Whenever I clean out their cage, I cut up some boxes and build them a cool little fort. From a functional standpoint, it allows me to put about 4 inches more substrate in one side of their cage while leaving the other low so it doesn't clog up the wheel and water bottle as often. It also gives exellent support for heavier items like the wood house in the second picture, stops them from making loud banging noises on the glass when they dig into them, and it gives them good hiding places. On top of all that, there's nothing cuter than gerbils exploring a new environment. It's also possible all of the above is just me trying to justify building gerbil forts.
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Nov 29, 2012 19:17
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I don't remember the brand, but I got it from Petsmart, which had three or four types of bottle that attach like that.
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Nov 29, 2012 19:23
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A Sloth posted:http://www.bitsforpets.com/clear-seal-tank-with-mesh-lid-18x12x12-p-3738.html I got a 30" from a local small pet shop for <$30, so if you don't know anyone that might have a used one, you might be able to find one somewhere like that for cheap. Mine was willing to substitute the normal lid for a mesh one at no extra cost.
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Dec 1, 2012 02:41
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Then again hamster cages being sold seem smaller than that.
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So I just bought two male robos today and they are fantastic and adorable. A couple of questions though: I already have a pair of gerbils, so will they likely freak out if I put their aquariums side by side, and if so is it a scent thing, or can I tape cardboard to the outside of the aquarium so they can't see each other? I've noticed that when the hamsters chirp, the gerbils will stop what they're doing and look around and vice versa. Also, do robos jump very high? There's about five inches from the highest surface they could stand on and the top of the cage, and I'm not sure if I should bother getting them a mesh lid. Also worth pointing out, I had no idea my gerbils were so massive until I brought the robos home. They are positively ginormous by comparison.
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Dec 16, 2012 23:16
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Thanks for the advice about cages. I ended up having to seperate the Robos since the bigger one wouldn't stop harassing the little one. I hoped it was just play fighting, but once I watched them for a bit, it was obvious that was not the case. The little guy was cowering in the corner and would freak out and run away any time he saw the big one. At one point the little one buried himself in a corner, but the big one ran over, dug him up, then started attacking him.  The pet store said they'd take the aggressive one back and put him up as a free solo adoption since I bought them less than 24 hours ago, with a warning that he shouldn't be caged with other hamsters. The owner told me that, even though they'd probably grow into the same size given time, the size difference is great enough now that there's a high chance the big one will try to eat the little one given his behavior so far.
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Dec 17, 2012 18:44
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There aren't a ton of diseases that gerbils carry that are transmittable to humans, but there's a risk of infection when pretty much any animal, people included, bite hard enough to break your skin. If they break the skin, just wash up with some antibacterial soap and use some antibacterial ointment on the wound to be safe. It wouldn't hurt to keep an eye on the bite to make sure it's not getting puffy or inflamed or anything, but it's honestly nothing to worry about. As far as the biting behavior goes, it's possible they're confusing your fingers for delicious, delicious sunflower seeds. I have one that bites when she's irritated and one that is more chill and just squirms when she's irritated, but they'll both try to nibble and occasionally chomp down if I've been handing food recently and haven't washed. Sumac fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Dec 20, 2012 |
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Dec 20, 2012 02:30
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Pew! Pew! posted:Here's a link to more reliably sexing guinea pigs: http://www.cavyspirit.com/sexing.htm You aren't kidding. When I was considering different hamsters my girlfriend saw an adult male Chinese Dwarf and told me in no uncertain terms that I am never owning a Chinese Dwarf hamster. I'm still not 100% sure whether the little guy had something wrong with him or if he was supposed to have testicles bigger than his head.
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Dec 27, 2012 17:23
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Pew! Pew! posted:Robos definitely do, coming from a Petco employee. They have to have their own cage because the mortality rates of keeping them together is ridiculous. Interesting, the two Petcos I shop at separate robos by sex, but house them together and even have little plaques that say they're social and should be housed in pairs. The clerks told me the same thing when I bought my pair, and when I took one of them back less than 24 hours later because one was being extremely aggressive, the clerk gave me a whole spiel about how I should pick out a second robo from the same litter to bring home so the one I had left didn't get lonely. He actually chastised me for deciding to keep a solitary Robo. I'm glad I didn't take their advice at face value and checked this thread and some other resources, but it's not surprising that people think they should be housed together with the way those stores were selling them. e: Since the separation I have been pampering the tiny hamster with toys and fun environments. I couldn't bear the thought of the bigger one hurting or possibly even killing him, and their brief 24 hours together has taught me to never attempt to house two robos again, and to trust only reliable sources of information coming from reputable organizations, rather than pet store facts and the million hamster fansites out there that are positively insistent that they can and should be paired up. I think the main source of confusion is that the reputable animal care organizations like the ASPCA recommend keeping dwarf hamsters in pairs, but don't go so far as to distinguish between robo dwarfs and campbell's dwarfs. Sumac fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Jan 1, 2013 |
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Jan 1, 2013 19:54
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Sirotan posted:Petco and other big name pet stores are probably the worst places to buy pets from or solicit information about animal care. They routinely sell animals that are in poor health, and in those rare occasions I have to enter one, I can't even bring myself to look at the tiny tiny cages they house the rodents in, especially the guinea pigs. It just breaks my heart. The people that work there probably mean well but I don't think they are trained particularly extensively. Yeah, that's good advice, and to be clear I was not using them as an informational resource or advocating that anyone else do so. I went there because for small rodents like robos, they house them in much better conditions than any of the small independant pet stores in my area, but their ferret and guinea pig cages were appalling. I would go so far as to say don't use them as an information resource, but be wary of rodent community forums too, as the consensus advice there tends to be every bit as harmful. I'd be interested to know if there's a good resource for finding robo breeders, because it would be nice to not give them my money, but I'm sure as hell not giving it to any of the horrid mom and pop stores around here.
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Jan 1, 2013 20:11
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Pew! Pew! posted:Yeah, even though I know some thing about animal care, pet store employees are bad to rely on in general. The majority just repeat what they're told and what's on care sheets. I was lucky enough that I have a manager willing to listen to suggestions, but a lot of them don't. I think that's the same with any store, really. I wish the stores around me had someone knowledgeable like you, instead I got a clerk who told me to pair them up, and avoid giving them a wheel because they can become "addicted to it," but that's not unique to pet stores. Getting animal care advice from one is like getting computer repair advice from a Staples; there are highly knowledgeable and overqualified people working there that can give you fantastic advice, but for every one of them there's four others who have no idea what they're talking about. I do think it's difficult to parse the good info from the bad with certain breeds, though. I mean, it's one thing for a pet store to give some bad advice, but when the ASPCA and the Humane Society both give the same bad advice, that's another problem entirely. Through my extensive pre-purchase research, this thread is the only place I've found where there actually seems to be a consensus against keeping robos together. I'm glad I read it in the end, but it's not surprising that so many people try to house robos together when the ASPCA & Humane Society have web sites advising people to keep dwarf hamsters in pairs (they treat robos and campbell's as the same type of hamster), when the pet store info placard tells you to keep them in pairs, and most community sites for robos tell you to keep them in pairs. I know I already asked about breeders, but for those of you that are knowledgeable about robos, is there a good, reliable source of information out there at all, or are you all drawing from first-hand knowledge?
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Jan 1, 2013 20:40
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Fraction posted:That seems really weird and counter-productive to, you know, the aims of the shop. Unless they were trying to get you to buy a more expensive pet over paying an adoption fee...? It's only counter-productive if you assume the minimum-wage clerks rushing to dissuade adoption actually cared about their parent company's profit margin. Most of the chain pet stores only offer small rodents like that up for adoption when they were returned to the store due to a behavioral problem (the sort of problem they don't just euthanize immediately upon return for). To bring up my earlier analogy, when I worked at Staples in high school I let customers know up front when the "Staples Protection Plan" was a huge waste of money, because basic human decency and honesty made more sense than acting in the best interests of the shareholders of the company that was paying me $6.25/hour to sell printer ink. Again though, if guys like Sirotan know of a good resource for identifying reputable places to get small rodents like dwarf hamsters, I would seriously love to know of it, but I spent a good two months looking before I made my decision, and I'm much happier giving Petco my money than giving it to the mom & pop scumbags that house 10+ unsexed hamsters in a 2'x5' plastic pet carrier. As it is, I think the "gently caress Petco" attitude is inappropriate and knee-jerk when you start getting into the small rodent world. It makes sense when you're talking about guinea pigs or ferrets, but that's not what was being discussed.
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Jan 2, 2013 01:21
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Sirotan posted:I can't really give you any useful resources because I don't have any expertise outside of guinea pigs. Hopefully someone else can chime in to give you want you want. And I think it's perfectly justified and not at all a knee-jerk reaction to tell people not to shop at Petco for how they treat their animals, whether it's the kind you are looking for or not. Mistreatment is mistreatment, whether it's birds or fish or guinea pigs. So you're just advocating an across the board boycot of Petcos and all other chain pet stores because of their treatment of animals in general? Thanks for clarifying your position, then. e: And the only reason I used the term "knee-jerk" is because you brought up their treatment of specific animals when their treatment of other animals seems to be far above what everybody else is doing, and their treatment of the animals you mentioned are, as far as I can tell, not one iota better than anyone outside of reputable breeders. I stand by my statement that I would rather give them my money than the scumbags that run the local independent stores. If you want to advocate for never ever buying anything from ANY pet stores that sell live animals or never buying certain animals because reliable breeders don't exist, that's another argument entirely. I would honestly like to give my money to a place that didn't do anything like that, but I haven't found a single one that's more humane. Do you just buy all your pet supplies from Amazon, or did you find a diamond in the rough independent shop that isn't utterly horrific? Sumac fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Jan 2, 2013 |
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Jan 2, 2013 01:38
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Rodent Mortician posted:I advocate boycotts of stores that sell animals because regardless of how well meaning their associates are they source all their small rodents from mills (which are as bad, if not worse than the mom and pop places you find abhorrent), and they fuel the overpopulation problem by selling to whoever strolls in the door. That huge bust last year from the Petco supplier? If I remember right, they were begging homes for about 500 hamsters. I think the TX guinea pig rescue ended up taking them. They were overcrowded, breeding rampantly, and attacking each other. I would absolutely love to get a hamster from a breeder or a shelter. The shelters in my area don't accept hamsters, and I couldn't find a single breeder that wasn't a random rear end in a top hat on Cragislist looking for homes for his 6 month to 1 year-old unsexed "baby" hamsters in months of searching. There aren't the kind of robust networks for hamster breeders the way there are for guinea pigs and other, longer-lived rodents. As far as good resources go, I haven't found a single positive recommendation for a place to buy a hamster in my entire state in months of searching. I've found hundreds of "Don't go here they're horrible!" comments, but it feels like nobody gives a poo poo about any animal that lives less than five years. It's incredibly simple to find good gerbil breeders, good guinea pig breeders, good ferret breeders, and even good rat breeders. You want a hamster? The prevailing advice is nothing but a torrent of "whatever you do, don't get one here!" without a single piece of useful advice of where people CAN turn to.
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Jan 2, 2013 02:10
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The perfect landing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJFHrIw3CYI Imagine this happening every 30 seconds for the past four hours and you can tell how my day's been going.
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Jan 15, 2013 21:24
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Cleaned out the rodent cages this afternoon. Went with a food theme for the hamster this time: I got him that mini casserole dish dust bath at goodwill this past weekend.
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Feb 6, 2013 23:34
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I got a Syrian the other day; does anyone have any recommendations for how to help a hamster lose weight? For a bit of background, I got her once she was about 8 months old already, and she had been returned to a Petsmart by multiple families because she bit kids (hasn't tried to bite me at all). She has pretty long hair, but is also a good bit chubbier than most Syrians her age. Here she is eating a yogurt treat. I'm using these along with kale and broccoli once every couple days to help tame her, so I'm planning to move her completely off this kind of thing once she's used to me/her cage.
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Apr 19, 2013 05:46
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Fraction posted:What kind of food is she on? A seed mix (I.e lots of sunflower seeds and millet and all that stuff in) will be highly fattening. Pellets might be better. I have her on the ecotrition mix I use for my robo and gerbils, since it doesn't contain sunflower seeds, but she just ignores the pellets in it. e: I should add, her original owners fed her nothing but pellets and would force her into a hamster ball and kick her around their house like a soccer ball according to the people I got her from, so I'm trying to both fight her natural instinct to eat fatty food and my own desire to spoil her rotten after what she's been through. Sumac fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Apr 19, 2013 |
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Apr 19, 2013 08:24
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Serella posted:Oh my god, who do this? Even as a dumb kid I would never have made an animal into a soccer ball. Poor ham. I don't know anything about the previous owners, but yeah it's pretty sad. I knew a kid in high school who talked about kicking his hamster down the stairs whenever he was having a bad day. I'm pretty sure the guy ended up committing suicide a couple years ago after someone publicly accused him of spousal abuse, so that's the kind of person that does these things. Fraction posted:^^^ Tortoiseshell guinea pig. There's an ingredient list on the "more info" tab of this page: http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=17303 I'd list them here but there are about 50 of them. I buy it mostly because it's the only hamster food my nearby store sells that doesn't have sunflower seeds in it. Thanks for the advice, I figured spoiling her was more for me than her, so I'll try to keep it healthy and not too frequent. e: Wow that post was way darker than I meant it to be. Here's a picture to lighten the mood:  (she is fogging up the glass with her nose) 
Sumac fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Apr 19, 2013 |
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Apr 19, 2013 20:31
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A Sloth posted:Russian Dwarf? It is a nice coloured little thing. I wanted to adopt one with that colour in its coat but I don't have room for another cage. Do you have a studfinder, a power drill, and some 2x4s? Time to hang some shelves.  e: I'm getting ready to move, but when I'm at my new apartment I'm going to do that for my 3 rodent cages. Some eye-level reinforced shelves hung on the walls with a nice thick lip to keep them from sliding fitted to the critter cages would look pretty great in just about any living room. I've seen someone do it before and it saves a hell of a lot of space. Sumac fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Jul 6, 2013 |
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Jul 6, 2013 03:14
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So this wheel has become my robo's one-stop shop for all of his hamster needs, and I'm wondering if I should be concerned. Over the past couple of weeks he's decided that he needs to do all of his sleeping, eating, grooming, running, urinating and defecating from within this little wheel. I tried buying him another one and putting it elsewhere in the cage, I tried replacing the one he normally uses with a new one, and I tried cycling out a bunch of different places for him to sleep in where he might feel secure, but he loves that wheel. When it's clean he's adorable, since he'll kind of splay out and fidget in his sleep, rocking back and forth in the wheel, but there's the rub - I have to clean this thing pretty much every day because it is his toilet. Should I take the wheel out altogether to train him to use something else, or should I just give up and clean it every day? I've also been avoiding mesh wheels since I heard they can cause problems for robos' tiny feet, but would that be appropriate in this situation?
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Jul 7, 2013 21:44
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Thanks for the tips, I took it yesterday and put it back this evening. He seems to no longer be interested in sleeping in it and is now curled up in a pile of shredded tissue in the corner of the cage, happy and (presumably) no longer sitting in a pile of his own poop.
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Jul 9, 2013 02:50
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nunsexmonkrock posted:Here is their new set up in my 29 gallon aquarium. I just need to figure out how to attach the water bottle and get a new wheel, because the last wheel attached to the side of the cage. I'm thinking with 29 gallons I can get them another friend once it it completely set up? The most popular option is to attach a plastic locking water bottle to the inside of the glass. These have a small lock which you attach to the wall with a piece of adhesive foamboard. They're quick and easy to use, but if your gerbils are anything like mine, it's only a matter of time before they decide that chewing a hole through the plastic on the bottle is faster than trying to drink from the spout. You can get these at pretty much any pet store. What I ultimately did, and what I think works a lot better, is used a glass-rated epoxy resin to glue a ceramic magnet to the inside of the aquarium (while the gerbils were out, it's non-toxic once set, but has some strong fumes until then), and glued another ceramic magnet to the back of a large glass water bottle designed for traditional cages. It's easy to detach and the gerbils can't chew through it. The only real downside to this method is that most resins set so strongly that you will probably never be able to remove the magnets from the glass if you ever want to reposition them. You can get the bottle at any pet store and the parts at any hardware store, usually in the fixtures/hardware section.
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Jan 7, 2014 23:45
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nunsexmonkrock posted:Last edit: Even though the Kaytee hay is super crappy, they were having so much fun after I cleaned things, I had to give them more and they are going crazy over it! That's awesome! Since I keep my tank on my desk, and since I'm very allergic to pretty much any hay or grass, I'll do kind of the same thing with bits of cardboard. I'll take a big box and slice it into 1x8" strips with a box cutter and sprinkle those around everywhere. They drop everything they're doing and just sit there and chew the strips up and mix it with their bedding. By the time they're done with it, I give them a fresh batch and by the time they're ready for a cage cleaning, they've effectively tripled the volume of their bedding. If I can find smooth cardboard I like to use that because one of them goes loving bananas for it. She'll take big flat pieces to the corner of the cage and rub her back all over it for hours. It's very adorable.
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Feb 21, 2014 01:02
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Yeah, from the reading I did before getting mine, any cedar bedding and any pine bedding except for kiln-dried pine has oils in it that are super bad for rodents. Cedar in particular is so bad for rodents that cedar mulch is sometimes marketed as an "all-natural" anti-rodent pest control. e: Upon further research, cedar chips probably aren't actually effective as a rodent repellant, they're just sometimes marketed as such. Still super bad for rodents though. They're supposedly good for keeping bugs away from plants though, so if you have a garden or some potted plants those chips might make an OK mulch. Sumac fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Mar 6, 2014 |
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Mar 6, 2014 19:32
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