Thank you. Hand taming is getting there. I do want to ask about biting. One of our gerbils bites every time a hand is in the cage. She has lots of other things that are worth biting, toys from pet shop, pine cones, sticks etc but is biting us alot. I read somewhere that if you blow on their heads that is punishment for a gerbil but this isn't doing the trick. She does pierce the skin and several times I have lifted my hand away with her dangling off as she has such a firm bite into my hand. Any ideas for this? We are making progress with hand taming but now the children are reluctant to get bitten.

When they are out in an evening the children will talk to them and offer them treats, through the bars initially and then if the gerbils are confident they'll open the door and offer treats on the hand. But it's such a slow.process and they often just run off and that will be that so it difficult to get anywhere with hand taming and I could really do with cleaning them out.

I don't talk to them when they aren't out of their burrows, but there are some noises the radio might be on for a bit, I might be on the phone etc. its not noisy or quiet if that makes sense. 😊They tend to appear about 8pm ish.

It's in an open plan kitchen/lounge, in a corner on top of a cabinet. The children are at school during the day and I'm at home in the day.

Hi Heather. So the hand taming is not going well but simply because they are only awake in the day for about 20mins. Which is less than when I first messaged. Some days we barely see them. On days when they are awake when we are around they are very scittish and scarper as soon as we approach the cage. They are very active at night as their bedding is always totally rearranged in the morning. We have been taking away the toys -loo rolls, lolly sticks etc and the treats at night and just leaving them their muesli and water in an effort to encourage them to be awake in the day. I tried the millet as you suggested during the day time but we haven't seen any improvement in them being awake during the day. When we have seen them both are a good size, healthy fur and shiny eyes and are looking healthy so I have no concerns there. We have had them for two months and I would like them to be awake in the day so we can properly try hand taming. At present I can't envisage being able to clean their bedding out. I did research before choosing gerbils over other pets and chose gerbils because they are awake mainly in the day rather than buying hamsters. But I hate to say it but so far I feel it's not what we were expecting at all. Neither gerbils will go on an open hand to retrieve a treat, not even the confident one. They both do take treats from pinched fingers and the confident one will be groomed at the side of her head.

Thanks Heather. I'll give that a go. I'll also only have it available during the day and take it out at night time. We can easily only see each gerbil once briefly in a 24 hour period. The hand taming is impossible when we don't see them. 😕 We gave them a plain dozen egg box last night and this morning only the bottom 1cm was there so they must be very active at night to have chewed a whole box. If we do see them we are hand taming with walnut pieces. I've bought some sunflower seeds too.

Thanks. I'll hold off the cleaning out just yet. I also wanted to ask about how much they should be awake. We only see them for about 20-60 mins during the day time. I had hoped they would be around more. In their topper is a sand bath, lolly sticks toy, apple wood, coconut hideaway, tunnel, food bowl, water bottle and a wood tunnel with holes in so lots to entice them up but they hardly come up.