White/Pale Yellow and loss of appetite.

[clichedegulovername]

So I have a pup, Pandora who is little under 12 weeks old. Today I was cleaning out the cage and when I put them all back into the cage I check them over to make sure they're OK. When I was trying to check her teeth she bit me, like, hard. Blood everywhere. Now that's totally against her nature to bite, she's such a good girl so I thought this was odd. Whenever I tried to check them she'd keep on biting me and she even bit through thick leather gloves. Once I got her to show them I noticed they were white-ish yellow. I read somewhere that in extreme cases that white teeth can mean something fatal. I don't really know what could have caused them to go white, there has been no change of diet and they all seem to be healthy.

[moletteuk]

Degu's teeth are pale when they are born and they only develop the orange colour over the first few months. It's difficult to say how orange they should be by 12 weeks so I think the best thing is if you compare them with one of her litter mates.

The orange colour is mineral 'staining' and is a sign that they are absorbing minerals as they should from their diet. The orange colour is only on the outside face of the front teeth.

You mention loss of appetite in the title, but didn't say any more about that, are there other signs apart from tooth colour that there is something wrong?

[jos]

Did you notice they were more orange prior to this? If it's any help, my three all still had very pale yellow teeth at 3 months, (compared to barely off white at 2 months when I got them), they gradually turned more orange over the next couple of months. I remember monitoring it as I had no idea at what age they were meant to be reaching maximum orangeness!