Just to add, if youre anywhere near Huddersfield Ive got a perfecto tank that youre welcome to but the lid is damaged so you would need to make a new one.

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gsds (Henrick and Bella), the cats (Syd, Lilly, Elvis and Dizzy), the gerbils (Honey, Lisa, crusty, Millhouse, Flanders, Bart and Homer), the rats (Valentine, Flower, Petal, Blossom, Koda, Cava, George), the mice (Minnie, Pop, Seudag, Caraid, Silver, Trouble, Athena, Pandora, Aphrodite, Meep, and Springtime)

yes but quite often they chew the bars through boredom and lack of stimulation so the problems are linked...

if u r trying a sandbath get the camera ready..its so funny to watch

need pics of your girls. its a must on the forum :

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If the nose is going bald due to bar chewing then you have a Gerbil who is exhibiting abnormal stereotypical behaviour. This is basically an addiction to chewing the bars and it is doing it out of compulsion rather than actually wanting to - this is normally done to alleviate stress as a way of coping. Unfortunately as most people get their Gerbils from pet shops where the Gerbils are not brought up in proper tunnel systems they can develop this sort of thing from an early age. Once this behaviour starts its virtually impossible to stop. The only thing you can do is as has been suggested, get a large tank and fill it to around 10 inches plus of substrate and just have a mesh lid with holes small enough that little noses and mouths can't fit through. If you don't have much time to let them out it's even more important they have a large tank of at least 3 feet in length.

thanks, ive been putting loads more paper for them to shred and getting a sandbath this weekend, the furs starting to grow back and she isnt chewing them anymore really, think i just didnt give them enough to do, they had tunnels but nothing to rip and play with, will see how it goes but all is looking good so far

just put some pics on my profile of them and a before and after pic of cocos nose looks miles better now thanks!x

glad its improving

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im going to move them into a large fish tank, just wondering where you put the water bottle and food bowl?x

You don't need a food bowl. Just scatter the food in the tank. This provides mental stimulation through foraging for the food.
For the water bottle - the substrate should be filled to around 3/4's of the depth of the tank, so all you have to do is sit the bottle on top of the mesh lid, with the spout poking through the mesh into the tank and they can get it that way.

I've had a gerbil do the exact same thing recently. I think he was doing it in the gerbilarium because he was trying to attack Zhane. I was split caging him with another gerbil, but he broke the split somehow and attacked Zhane so the split is on hold but he's still aggressive to little Zhane. I was swapping them around daily from gerbilarium to tank to get them used to each others scent without being near each other, but I had to stop when Ayase lost all the fur on his noes.

I have had gerbils with some very funny bauld spots. I had one which kept getting one on his back. He used to lie upside down on the bottom of his tank chewing the wooden bridge and he eventually rubbed all his fur off. I saw some of my first gerbils chew their bars so much they had bauld faces (I had to leave them with my mum to look after and she never gave them any playtime).

Gerbils tend to need lots of toys, not esentially wood, but just something they can chew on and destroy or the bar chewing starts. Zhane isn't a bar chewer, he doesn't really like being out in the open at all and rarely ever talks to me, but with all the toys he's got I don't blame him. Ayase has loads of toys, but he is a bar chewer given half the chance. He was a rescue gerbil so with how fast he took to chewing the bars I think he's had the habbit a long time. No amount of toys can stop that gerbil when he starts going for them.

The reason as to why they bar chew is down to them either being in the wrong environment, or being brought up in the wrong environment when they are pups. In order to avoid developing these sorts of stereotypical behaviours, pups especially at eye opening age MUST be able to live in burrows. As often pet shop Gerbils (and unfortunately a lot of Gerbils from breeders who "should" know better) are denied this and instead have minimal bedding. This results in the bar chewing behaviour. Providing the correct environment, and environmental stimulation can help, but the only way to completely stop it once the compulsion has started is to remove the source - ie get rid of any bars, and only have mesh which is too small for gerbil noses and mouths to get around. A lot of people don't realise that this is disturbed stereotypical behaviour - similar to pacing in caged big cats, feather plucking in parrots and wind sucking in horses.

"Stereotypical behaviors are thought to be caused ultimately by artificial environments that do not allow animals to satisfy their normal behavioral needs. Rather than refer to the behavior as abnormal, it has been suggested that it be described as "behavior indicative of an abnormal environment."Stereotypies are correlated with altered behavioral response selection in the basal ganglia. As stereotypies are frequently viewed as a sign of psychological distress in animals, there is also an animal welfare issue involved."