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Post by davx on Sept 2, 2011 22:28:41 GMT
Hello,
it is perhaps only a small piece of information, but I think it could be interesting.
The degu diet consist of plant matter from shrubs and herbs including seeds. The amount of seeds is 20-40% of the whole diet, with a seasonal fluctuation from 5% to over 60%.
Degus prefer the following fodder plants:
- Erodium cicutarium (introduced weed from Europe)
- Porlieria chilensis (acacia like native shrub)
- Baccharis species (native shrub)
- grasses (e.g. Bromus, Stipa etc.)
In past the Chilean wine palm (Jubaea chilensis) was a wide spread species building large palm forests. Nowadays it's a threatened species and only small forest paches could survive. One of them is in Ocoa, near Santiago de Chile. Here the degus feed on the nuts of this palm, the so called "coquitos". They are used as energy rich staple food and as reserve for the dry months. I tested this nut and the degus liked it.
The palm grows here as park tree in the mediterranean like parts in southern Switzerland.
selected literature
Meserve, P.L. 1981. Trophic relationships among small mammals in a Chilean semiarid thorn scrub community. Journal of Mammalogy 62: 304-314.
Meserve, P.L. Martin, R.E. Rodriguez, J. 1983. Feeding ecology of two Chilean caviomorphs in a central mediterranean savanna. Journal of Mammalogy 64: 322-325.
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Post by deguconvert on Sept 3, 2011 1:20:58 GMT
Cool!! This is very interesting. None of those sound very much like what is in the hard pellets available at the stores do they.
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Post by aya0aya on Sept 3, 2011 6:43:52 GMT
I was thinking to search internet for this information. Thank you, now I don't have to, I owe you a coffee  But still.. it looks like I won't be able to get my goos all those things. I never saw one of those palms. |
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Post by davx on Sept 3, 2011 6:54:32 GMT
Right. Pellets are a byproduct of the food industry. The production is cheap, it meets the energetic requirements of our animals, but it neglects further important aspects, which are vital for mental and physical health.
Interestingly in the german community we disadviced Pellets since the beginning, but I know the discussion about pellets from the Chinchilla owners. It was very hard to rethinking a diet without pellets. The difference between this two communities is that the chinchilla owners are strongly influenced by decades of pellet feeding breeders.
I followed the roots of the pellet feeding in Chinchillas by reading old breeder literature (it is very interesting to read). The pellet feeding goes back to the 1960, when american breeders start to use pellets. The german breeder were skeptical, but in the end the fact that it is much easier and cheap convinced them. In the years before they fed vegs, grasses, fruits and grains and the chins did well.
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Post by davx on Sept 3, 2011 7:20:44 GMT
aya0ayaWell this info is only a short snippet of the whole topic. But it gives a first coarse insight. I started with a deeper research on field studies about the degu diet several years ago. Researchers, among them Peter Meserve, sampled the stomach content of previously killed degus over some 10 months and analysed the content of degu faeces (excrements). They listed the diet from degus in large tables, what I give here is only a very compact summary, but I try to give additional insights step by step and show you primary sources available freely in the web. By the way does any of you understand spanish, e. g. our american reader? Some information are only in Spanish. For me it tooks several years to learn reading them, but they supplement the excellent english sources.
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Post by davx on Sept 5, 2011 19:38:07 GMT
In small steps it goes ahead. Yesterday I searched studies about coquitos consumption of degus, but the only what I could find was in spanisch. Fortunately the abstract is also translated in english and thus quite useful. But first I'd like to introduce this special nut and the palm so that you better can imagine what I'm talking about. The coquitos (they are really little cocosnuts):  Btw. the taste remembers also to the cocosnuts (I had to taste it of course ;-) ). And the palm:  The photo is from Switzerland. The palms grow here in parks in the mediterranean like southern part near the frontier to Italy. Suitability as animal food: In wild the nuts are used by cururos (Spalacopus cyanus, rarely also kept as pet), degus, olive grass mice (Abrothrix olivaceus) and Bennet chinchilla rat (Abrocoma bennetti). In addition also the introduced ship rats (Rattus rattus) feeding on this nuts and they are also heavily harvested by humans. The shell of the nuts is thick and hard, but the degus are used to crack them, also domestic rats (Rattus norvegicus) learn quickly to crack them (here the proof: cracked nuts - the left nut is a coquito and right a macadamia). Nutritional content: The nuts contain 3,5 % water, 7,0 % protein, 67,3 % fat, 11,6 % crude fiber und 1,1 % minerals (Masson et al. 2008). References Masson, L. Camilo, C. M. Torija, M.E. (2008): Caracterización del aceite de coquito de palma chilena (Jubaea chilensis). Grasas y Aceites 59(1): 33-38. doi:10.3989/gya.2008.v59.i1.487 Zunino, S. Saiz, F. (1991): Estructura y densidad poblacional de Octodon degus Mol. Studies on Neotropical Fauna and Environment 26(3): 143-148. Additional information (in german) and photos: www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/Coquito |
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Post by deguconvert on Sept 5, 2011 21:12:06 GMT
What a cool nut! I was sure I was looking at a normal sized coconut, until I looked at the Coquitos and Macadamia picture. It's just like a minature of the larger ones you can buy at a grocers. So . . . can degus have plain, untreated, coconut meat as well?
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Post by malteser60 on Sept 5, 2011 22:12:35 GMT
The fat content is very high. Am I assuming that with degus pets you would feed this as an occasion? Mainly as it seems great as a source of energy for wild degus with an uncertain diet.
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Post by NightwishRaven999 on Sept 5, 2011 23:30:37 GMT
The fat content is very high. Am I assuming that with degus pets you would feed this as an occasion? Mainly as it seems great as a source of energy for wild degus with an uncertain diet. My thoughts exactly... This would be an excellent food source for a group of degus that live in more arid regions...especially during the months where leaves, seeds and plants are more sparse in the Chilean steppes. David...thank you for sharing these tidbits of insight with us ! We have been learning much, but this only makes us realise we have a lot more to learn about wild degus and their diet/habits |
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Post by Maravilla on Sept 6, 2011 6:35:44 GMT
@ David, do you have the article by Zunino & Saiz (1991) as .pdf? I would like to have a closer look on it but it seems it's no available for free on Internet.
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Post by davx on Sept 6, 2011 17:43:33 GMT
MaravillaIt is in spanish, I'll send you a pm. And no it is not available in the web. You have to ask in a good universitary library. But the same authors had published two further studies (also in spanish) published in the "Revista Chilena de Historia Natural" you can find via google scholar. Keywords for success are "ocoa" (name of the palm forest) and of course degu or "octodon degus". The studies are published between the 1980ies and 1994. malteser60No, not as an occasion, but they use it to bridge the dry summer, when good food is scarce. In addition the amount of seeds in the degu diet can vary considerable from less than 5% to over 60%. They can use the nuts as main diet, but it is seasonal restricted. For us that means that it depends on the situation. Basically we can offer the nuts (with shell) also in larger quantities, for the degus it is exhausting to crack the nuts. Even when we offer nuts ad libitum, it seems that the degus feed the nuts in large quantities at the beginning, but gradually they lose interest and sometimes they ignore nuts for several months. My degus did so with walnut and after some months they searched the excavated nuts in the substrate and started to crack by occasion such a nut. If I had degus with overweight, I would of course care more for their diet and restrict the nuts. But for healthy degus, I actually think, that they can deal with a ad libitum offer as long as the nuts are fed with shell. The shell is important for two reasons, first it protects the nut for storage in substrate, second it make it difficult for the degus to feed it in big quantities. @dc The cocosnuts I didn't test. In my opinion they are too large. The coquitos have an ideal size. But you can offer other nuts like pecan, macadamia, walnut or hazelnut / filbert nuts (Corylus maxima -> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corylus_maxima ). @jordan *g* You are right, the degus use the nuts (but also other seeds, especially because nowadays the palm forests are rare) to bridge the arid summer season, when high quality food is scarce. Then the amply herb layer dries out and the degus shift to the leaves and seeds of evergreen shrubby species. This plants are often rich in fiber content and contains also several secondary plant compounds like tannins, saponins and so on. They often are hard to digest because they are low in energy and they need additional energy for detoxification processes in the gut.
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Post by davx on Sept 6, 2011 17:48:09 GMT
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Post by davx on Sept 7, 2011 1:57:47 GMT
So here another work, fortunately in english. It's all about this Chilean wine palm: Gonzalez et al. (2009): Ecology and Management of the Chilean Palm (Jubaea chilensis): History, Current Situation and Perspectives. Palms 53(2): 68-74. www.captura.uchile.cl/jspui/handle/2250/10563The current population in Chile is estimated to 120 000 trees. That is about 2,5% of the population found in the 19th century. The palms nowadays are found in only around 15 localities, but three of them have only important numbers of palms: Ocoa (La Campana National Park) with around 60 000 trees, Cocalán (private forest) with 35 000 and Las Siete Hermanas 7200 trees. The article is interesting to read and contanis information to the use of the palm, threats, effect of nut harvest and also our degus as seed consumers are mentioned. In addition it contains photos of palm forests and a table giving an overview to the current distribution of the palms. |
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Post by davx on Sept 7, 2011 2:16:08 GMT
aya0ayaSlovenia is near to Italy, isn't it? Perhaps you can find such a palm if you travel to Italy. In the northern part I'm shure that there are parks you can find some (region of Lago Maggiore or Lago di Como), but also more in south there would be probably some in botanical gardens or parks as ornamental tree. The palm grows in a mediterranean like climate and assume it is therefore also spread in the mediterranean zone of Europe, occuring here in private gardens, parks and botanical gardens. I don't know if even in Slovenia you can find some, perhaps that would be possible. In Germany germinated seedlings are offered for few euros in the internet (ebay and so on). The palm is cold resistant to a temperature of around -15 °C, but it grows slowly and until the first nut harvest it lasts around 60 years. Therefore it is better to find adult trees, but for the future it is of course a good idea to plant such palms, if the weahter is mild enough (I assume that's in general true for Slovenia) and there is space, where the palm has the possibility to grow for the next decades. In addition as I told deguconvert, you can also use other nuts. For me the coquitos were also a lucky chance to give some to my degus. But as staple nut food it is also for me insuitable, I use other nuts instead (hazelnut, walnut, almond, pecannut, acorn etc.) edit: I found this by wikipedia: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Jubaea_chilensisThere are three additional mentions: It seems that in southern France the palm is also used as ornamental tree, in Kew Gardens (botanical garden) in UK they cultivate at least one in the green house and in Czech Republic you can find it in the botanical garden of Prague. edit2: Especially for Jordan, I found this here in the french wikipedia. In contrast to the information in the articles of the other languages, the article in french is very long and I think also informative: fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocotier_du_ChiliI can also recommend this article for the others here because it is enriched with many interesting pictures... you don't have to understand french (but it is of course a lot more informative  ).
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Post by Maravilla on Sept 7, 2011 19:18:00 GMT
Muchas gracias, David ! Downloading them was like introducing degus: it was a question of lots of time and even more patience (and several attempts)!! I don't remember when I had such low downloading velocities for the last time... madre mía! |
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Post by davx on Sept 8, 2011 20:51:15 GMT
Yes here also was the rate a bit slow, but I usually download, while surfing and reading in the web. So it doesn't matter.
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Post by davx on Sept 10, 2011 1:08:58 GMT
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Post by deguconvert on Sept 10, 2011 4:37:55 GMT
WOW!! It's stunning!! Thank you for posting these!!
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abirose
Burrowing Degu
Forum Helper
Posts: 276
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Post by abirose on Sept 10, 2011 11:05:02 GMT
Hi I was just curious about acorns, you mention that you give them with other nuts, on degutopia it lists them as being poisonous, have you found this not to be true? I have found that my degu's have been fine with oak wood which I know is questionable as to whether it is toxic, but they have really enjoyed it and I was curious about acorns.
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Post by davx on Sept 10, 2011 22:19:29 GMT
Yes it is regarded as poisonous food. In fact my experience is a different one and I found studies about rabbits mentionning acorns as food item. But I have to add that I feed them only occasionally.
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