Your First Night


When you arrive to pick up your gerbil, please bring your tank or bin with you for inspection. Don't worry, we won't deny you a gerbil unless you're trying to keep them in a shoebox. We will just offer suggestions.

Your housing should have 3-4" of bedding, water bottle (may be empty for the trip), hut or hide of sorts (literally a cardboard box is fine for this, but it should be blank with no plastic or printing), and some timothy hay or other alternative chews.

We will provide a small transport box that smells of home, along with some bedding and home food in the box. When we arrive at your car you can keep the gerbils in the box and pop that directly into their housing. This ensures no escapees! 

When you get home you can carry your gerbil tank inside and get them settled into their area. For the first 48 hours I recommend a moderately quiet area such as a dining room or a basement area. You want to keep from stressing the gerbils out too much. Walk by the tank 3-4 times a day and talk in a normal volume. We always tell our gerbils when I'm feeding them "hey gerbies let's have some food". Scatter some small amounts of food twice daily for a week or so to get them used to your hand coming in the tank but not trying to grab for them.

After a 48 hours - a week you can move your gerbils to where you'd like to keep them. We suggest bedrooms, not too high off the ground and not in direct sunlight. The room should have natural sunlight if possible, our gerbils are in a north facing room. Make sure the area is not easily disturbed by cats and dogs, which will see your gerbils as prey not play.

Place your hands in the tank with some sunflower seeds 2-3 times a day to encourage the gerbils in a positive way. Do not grab your animals, let them come to you. This takes time but soon you will have your gerbil running from arm to arm. Never grab your gerbil by the head or tail, and teach children to not squish gerbils. Gerbils can deglove their tails, which is a nasty sight though not fatal. This happens when tails are grabbed, so again do not grab your gerbil by the tail.

After a week you can add additional bedding and tidy the tank. We recommend tank changes of 95% every 4-6 weeks at least, or when it starts to smell or seem damp. Gerbils are desert animals and will die in too damp of an enclosure. Also ensure there is no ink or dust on your bedding. 

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