Wednesday, September 26, 2012

New Gerbil

Fleur de Lis Gerbils is excited to welcome our newest addition, Maddie, a solid Burmese female. I adopted her from a lady who had an accidental litter. Unfortunately, the lady did not realize that she had her in a tank with another male. She looks to be around 3-4 months old. She is seperated from my other gerbils right now. I always quarantine new gerbils for at least two weeks, but I am going to be keeping her in a seperate room until I know for sure if she is pregnant or not. She is very young and will be raising pups by herself. I don't want to put her in another room with new smells and other gerbils to cause her any undue stress. I had gotten her to be a mate for McGee, but that is going to have to wait for at least a month. Below is a picture of Maddie. She is a real sweetheart. Gerbils don't start showing signs of being pregnant until right before they have the pups, so it may be another week or two before I know for sure. After that has passed, I will be introducing her to McGee. This weekend will mark her second full week with us. She has gained some weight and started relaxing a little. She was a little underweight and looked to be slightly dehydrated when we brought her home. I have her on a food that has 16% protein in it and am giving her small bits of scrambled eggs, Cheerios, slivers of almonds, and celery to help boost her protein intake. If she is pregnant, I want to help her be as healthy as I can before she has the pups. It's going to be hard on her raising them alone.