New mom of degus. What is the best american food?

[sandie]

I am new to owning degus, and I am confused about their diet. I read to give rodent blocks, guinea pig pellets, and Timothy Hay. They will not eat the guinea pig pellets. The only things they will eat is the rodent locks, and Timothy hay. Is this a good diet for them? Is there a degu food here in the US that is good for degus. The only ones I have seen is Sun Seed Sunscription Vita Degu, and Exotic Nutrition Degu Complete. Please help.

Thanks

[Karma]

Rodent blocks are much too high in protein for degus. I would take them out immediately.

You should be able to find degu nature by veresele-laga as well. This is a pretty good food for them. Otherwise try different guinea pig brands to find one they will eat better but remember degus can't metabolize sugar so don't get anything with sugar, corn syrup or molasses as an ingredient.

They can also eat dried or fresh leaves (of safe plants), vegetables and some flowers (like dandelions). Millet seeds, other low oil seeds, puffed rice or oats can also be part of their diet.

Congrats on your new babies!!

[yasmin]

I use the Versele-Laga Degu Nature food along with Sunseed Sunscription Vita Degu pellets, with lots of hay. They were on just the Sunseed Sunscription and hay before I found a store selling the Versele-Laga and they were fine on that alone (of course with hay, and degu-safe fresh/dried vegetables and the occasional degu-safe treat like millet, rolled oats, puffed rice etc.)

[amie]

Please don't use rodent blocks. They are meant for meat eaters, such as rats.

As a basic diet, you can feed them anything that's designed for degus, such as P@H nuggets. If you're feeling more adventurous, you could making your own natural diet mixes?

Also feed them lots of hay (makes up most of their diet).

[sandie]

Thank you for your help. Do they sell Versele-Laga Degu Nature food in the US. From what I can tell, it is only sold overseas.

[Karma]

versele-laga is sold in canada at least. The pet store I work at actually bought skids of it directly from belgium before our local wholesaler Cichlid started to carry it.

[moletteuk]

Apr 13, 2012 9:49:37 GMT sandie said:

The only ones I have seen is Sun Seed Sunscription Vita Degu, and Exotic Nutrition Degu Complete. Please help.

Does anyone know which of these is better, if that's all that Sandie can find available?

[deguconvert]

Sunseed is pretty good, but our degus wouldn't eat it. I have encountered other degu owners on the forum whose degus would eat ONLY the Sunseed, so . . . I guess you give it a try and see what you find? For the hard food I mix with natural foods, I use Hagen's Living World Guinea Pig Extrusion, which I know isn't the best food resource, but it is only a portion (1/4?)of what they eat, so I am not worried that they aren't getting all that they need. I've looked at the Exotic Nutrition, and it has changed. When I first joined I thought it looked good and was considering ordering it . . . but never did. Then I looked at it again last fall and I was not impressed with it at all.

[dyzired]

Mine get the vita Degu as well because I also live in the US and that's all I've been able to find here. Along with hay and the occasional treat. Message me if you have any other questions about findin stuff in the US...maybe we can help each other?

[firefly]

I feed mine a mix of Nature's promise guinea pig food and vita degu. The vita degu is pretty small for the price and I can only find it at one petco around me. I don't know anyone else's opinion about the guinea pig food, it's the only one I've found without any form of sugar near me and the protein, fat and fiber content are good. It doesn't have any of the other nutritional values listed though and it contains corn. I figure it's fine if mixed with the degu food. I also feed dried herbs, I haven't found a good place the get them so I just feed what I have growing, and dried vegetables (I haven"t been able to get mine to eat anything fresh). I dry some myself, but Petsmart has a mixed vegetable medley (All living things) that mine love. Petco also carries Oxbow botanical hay which has added herbs and flowers.

I had degus a few years ago and after getting my ones now and researching everything again (I could be wrong, but feel like there's a lot more information available now) I realized the food I had my first ones one wasn't the best, so I'm trying to make sure I don't make that mistake again. I was really surprised to find actual degu food when I went to buy them things for the first time, there didn't use to be anything degu specific.

Sorry for the long response, I know your question has already kind of been answered. Just thought I'd add something. I've found it kind of difficult adding more natural things to my degus diet with whats available in the US. If you or any other us members come across readily available dried herbs or anything like that then I'd love to know. Also if anyone has any opinion on the zoopreme nature's promise guinea pig food that would be helpful too.

[Karma]

So the zupreem nature's promise guinea pig food does have sugar in it - it is under the name Dextrose. Yes, using the scientific name fools people into believing it is better than the other foods. Lovely marketing label games.

Try to find Martin's guinea pig food www.martinmills.com/smallPetsGuineaPig.asp. Although I just noticed that the buggers did change the formula recently - try to find the timothy based food and not the basic guinea pig to have the proper fat level.

or

Living world guinea pig extrusion (I think .... or was it healthy timothy?)

Basically you need a food without the following; sugar, glucose, fructose, dextrose, corn syrup, or molasses. Those are all different types of sugar.

[Karma]

www.petco.com/product/109481/Healthy-Select-Natural-Guinea-Pig-Diet.aspx

What do other people here think of this one? Hopefully your local petco stores would carry it. There is bits of cranberry and apple in it but a whole bunch of other GREAT stuff like petals and herbs.

This could be an option as well.

[moletteuk]

That looks really promising apart from the apple and cranberry as you point out, and also I don't think pine cones are good. Maybe the pieces are big enough that you could pick them out because it looks like it could be a useful option otherwise, given the limited choice in USA/ Canada?

(I've modified the thread title to catch the attention of other Americans )

[firefly]

Oh no! I didn't realize. When I was getting it I pretty much just went through every guinea pig food in the store and that was literally the only one that didn't have molasses. I guess after reading so many I was only looking for molasses and didn't notice the dextrose. Unfortunately I just bought a new bag too and wasn't able to find the sunseed degu food either. They had it at petco just a month or so ago. Well I guess I'll just have to get one mentioned above and pick out the apple, cranberry, and pinecone unless I can find somthing else by tomorrow. There's a few local places I can try first.

[Karma]

Dextrose isn't as bad as glucose or molasses so you should be fine using that food until you can find something better, so don't panic

You also want to switch them over slowly to not upset their tummies too much.

Both of the living world foods I mentioned above will be fine (looked at them at work last night).

[firefly]

I couldn't find the living world ones. I got the healthy select and I'm going to pick out all the apple, pine cone, and cranberry. Do cranberries really have much sugar though? I think they have less than carrots, should I pick both out? It seems like a pretty good food otherwise, there's lots of flowers and leaves in it. I was wondering why they can't have pine cone. I mean I don't mind picking them out, they are whole little pine cones so it's pretty easy, just curious.

[moletteuk]

Here's a chart with relative sugar contents: www.guinealynx.info/chart.html

You are right, cranberries aren't too bad. I think pine cones have phenols/ volatile oils in them that are bad for degus.

I'd love to see a picture of this mix if you have a camera?

[firefly]

Sure, here is the stuff I took out.


and here is the food. Sorry for the quality, they are taken from my phone. Also sorry for the size. I'm not really sure how to change that.

[winic1]

I use the Vita Degu, and timothy hay, and supplemental local plants and such as I can. Petco seems to have stopped carrying the Vita Degu, used to order it online with my other pet supplies, but it seems to be gone from the website the last two times. So I found it on Amazon last time, and we keep an eye out for it at other local pet stores. Our Petco & online they only seem to carry Kaytee hay, who does make a hay-flower mix, however the first bag I got had about 5 flowers total in it, and the second has lots of flowers, but the hay seems to be lots of tiny little bits, as if I got the bottom of the barrel. For the price they charge for the stuff, I am really not impressed. Glad I got mine on a two-fer sale, or I'd be really upset.

Found a dried flower/herb site online, but haven't tried their stuff yet. Called them and they say that their stuff is mostly gathered wild overseas in places like India and Egypt, so they can't guarantee it is organically grown, but it doesn't come from professional farms where there might be lots of pesticide use. Not sure if sources like they use are the same as supply the European companies who sell mixes, and so are safe? Also found a dried flower farm in upstate New York who seem to grow all their own stuff, but haven't had time to contact them to make sure it's pesticide free. If anyone wants to check out either site, here they are:

www.goodhopebotanicals.com Good Hope Botanicals is the first one, and

www.driedflowersdirect.com Dried Flowers Direct from Keuka Farm is the second.

[firefly]

Thanks for the websites.That first site looks good. I mean, like you said I don't know how you could know it was safe for sure but, I think it would be fine, I will probably order from it myself when I get some extra money. Their teas look pretty good too, for people that is.

The flower site may be good for treats, but none of the quantities are more than 5oz and the prices are like $4-$6. It could get pretty expensive making that a main part of there diet. They are whole flowers too so most of it is going to be stem. Also I wasn't sure if degus could eat the stems of the flowers, I guess they could you just never see rose stems in any pet mixes, it's always the flowers.