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Post by lnsybean44 on Feb 10, 2010 17:22:37 GMT -5
Haha, I hope you mean you will breed hamsters to feed to your dogs and cats... not breed dogs and cats to feed to your ferrets
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Post by fuzzymom on Feb 11, 2010 15:34:23 GMT -5
*facepalm* Haha, yea I meant breeding feeders FOR my cats and dog. My dog LOVES raw food whenever he gets some and has actually been known to sit by the ferret cage and wait for them to drop something. I'm wondering what he would do with a mouse.
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Post by goingpostal on Feb 15, 2010 12:40:51 GMT -5
Wanted to bump this back up, I was given 8 gerbils yesterday, mom and 4 babies and 3 other adult females. Did some reading and sounds like for breeding, only the babies will do me any good as adults are very territorial and hard to introduce others to.
So I fed off the group of 3 females this morning. My prey dispatcher was a little confused as she's only been given mice previously but figured it out just fine and everyone seems to enjoy the change of pace, although 3 gerbils to 6 ferrets caused some scuffles.
I'm not sure how old the babies are, I'm thinking 3-4 weeks so I am going to try to sex them, hold back the females for breeding and buy males to set them up in pairs. Sounds like they don't reproduce nearly as well as mice/rats but they will be a different prey item on occansion anyways. Cute little buggers too, none bit although they had pretty much been ignored according to the previous owner. I know the pet store is overflowing with gerbils so hopefully they have young males in stock.
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Post by josiesmom on Mar 12, 2010 18:05:55 GMT -5
I've raised mice successfully for feeding to my ferrets - but it became VERY time consuming to keep the bins clean and separating the mice andall so I stopped. But I was reading about Gerbils and something that keeps coming up is that they aren't as smelly as mice and rats.
I had a pair of gerbils as a child and don't recall them being smelly and I'm certain that if they were my Mother would have made it known! She DID get annoyed at their squeaky wheel!
So anyway it looks like gerbils have similar gestation periods but somewhat smaller litter sizes. Mice are considerably cheaper to acquire for breeding - but I'm intrigued about the low odor of the gerbils. I used a room air purifier in the mouse room and this helped considerably - but then again, I was always having to clean bins too.
ANyway - I'm back to weighing my options of saving time or saving money and still giving the ferrets opportunities to eat right!
Cheers, Kim
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Post by goingpostal on Mar 12, 2010 18:11:28 GMT -5
Well I kept back 3 females and bought two males from the pet store, one an adult and the other about the same size as my girls.
The adult male was with 2 females however they are breeding age now and have begun mating, the females started squabbling a bit so one is on her own now, I'm hoping she will have a litter and then that group will be fed off, just want to keep the two pairs.
They really don't smell, nor do they seem to eat/drink nearly as much as the mice. With any luck I will have babies the end of the month. I haven't seen the younger pair mating yet.
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