What to do for Chester?

[winic1]

Summary of the situation:
Chester is about 6-3/4 years old.  His buddy Chitter died suddenly last fall.  We adopted 3 two-year old brothers to be Chester's new companions.  They all live in a divided Critter Nation Cage, the boys have 2/3 and Chester has 1/3.  I had hoped to integrate them, but the boys have never calmed down about Chester's presence. 

Several weeks ago, Chester suddenly is tipped to the right.  His right side is weak.  He falls over if he moves too quickly.  Pretty sure his right eye doesn't see, or not much, anymore. Looks like he had a bit of a stroke. Yet he's still eating and drinking and moving around his cage, if wobbly and cautious. 

A few days ago, he looked much weaker, thought we were at the end.  Been much less restrictive with dried veggies and seeds and oats and treats, (not like I'm going to ruin his health now), so feeling very sorry for him, I loaded his bowl with oats and veggies and seeds.  Well, he's looking stronger the last two days.  But he's still tipped to the right, has questionable vision, falls over if he moves too fast and struggles to re-orient and right himself.  He will work his way over to the side of the cage, then travel around by leaning his right side against the cage side and traveling around the level that way instead of just crossing it.

[bouncy]

Poor Chester! As long as he's still living his life and enjoying it, I would just spoil him rotten. Have you confirmed the stroke with the vet, and that he's not in any pain?

[winic1]

Chester's portion of the cage has 3 levels, with a ramp between the bottom and middle, and branches/log levels between the middle and top. He prefers to sleep in his hut in the top level, even tho it's difficult to get up there. The water bottle is in the bottom level, as soon as I find the spares (house under renovation, don't know where anything is anymore) I'm adding one or two, but I didn't want to move the one he knows, so I've added a small, sturdy water bowl on the top level. I put the bowl with his veggies/oats/seeds on whatever level he's on when I get there, and then move it to the top when he climbs up to go to sleep. He can be side by side with the boys, against the wire divider, at the bottom of the ramp at the bottom level. I see him doing that more now, not sure if it's because he wants the comfort, or if he's just resting there before beginning the climb back up to higher levels. Before his stroke, he would sit on the middle level and watch the boys, from a bit of a distance (because of the opening for the ramp), but rarely go nose to nose with them.

Seeing Chester have such difficulty moving around, and wondering how much vision he has left, I am thinking it might be better to restrict him to a single level? He has three half-levels now, and many of the features of his side are built in and not easy to change, but I could readily extend his top level to become just a single, fairly flat, full level. That would, however, cut him off from the boys below. And, if he's got poor vision, and is running off memory, is it fair to change his world that much?

I could still give him a little access to the boys by putting the other half to make the full level down a few inches, then there'd be a small overlap between the boys's section and his new floor. It would mean there were still places to fall down from, but not very far. Right now, he has been good about never falling between levels, only off/under/around the various objects and smaller shelves/bark/etc within a level. This would be a bit harder to rig, but could be done.

I could give him his two upper half-levels, and restructure the way between them to have a better, easier ramp. This would be a bit more work than the other choices, and it leaves him working his way up a bigger difference in levels. which he is still doing at the moment.

The boys would, of course, gain the space I take from Chester. Which is a plus, but mostly I am concerned about what's best for Chester.

Easier living space, but less of it?
Change from what he knows well, when he's got poor or possibly very little vision and who knows if his mind has been affected?
Safer living space, even tho different and smaller?
Less contact with the other goos, tho he's never seemed more than mildly interested in them until now, and that may be situational, not really a desire to be with them? (And they fight each other like crazy over who gets to be near Chester when he's out, so it's stressful, not peaceful.)

I don't know if he's going to go tomorrow, or last days, or weeks, or what. I see him struggling with his current set up. I could be promoting cataracts or diabetes or both by giving him the unrestricted diet now, but it seems to have given him more strength, so he's feeling better, so it's worth it whatever else happens, right? I know he's not going to get "better". But I want to make whatever time he still has as good as possible.

What do you think?

[winic1]

We don't have a vet anywhere in the region who knows squat about degus. They are pretty rare around here, we had to go a hundred miles to get the three boys, and they were the closest choice of two other groups only. (the rest were more like 800-1000+ miles away.)

Figuring it's a stroke because it happened suddenly (overnight or less), he is weak on his entire right side, and only the right. He falls only to the right. He does not shake his head or paw at his ear or seem in pain or anything that indicates an ear infection. At the same time, his right eye changed, too, not open as wide, and seems to not see or not as well.

Not sure if his looking so poorly this weekend was another event, or if he just wasn't managing to eat enough hay and pellets. The veggies he gets are air-dried, so they are as hard if not harder than the pellets, and he's eating those just fine. Maybe he just needs a higher calorie diet now, and the rolled oats would be both easy to eat and good quick calories.
But his difficulty moving worries me. That may have played into it also, if it was too hard to get out and up/down to where the food was when I wasn't there to notice him trying?

[deguconvert]

I think go with the unrestricted diet, it is helping him, and maybe it will even reverse some of what you are seeing. Perhaps restricting him to a single level for a short while would be good, if only to see how he responds to it. Being removed from contact with the other two could be very detrimental to him, or not so much, but you won't know till you try, and once you try, you will probably know fairly quickly. Then again . . . he could go down hill very quickly it being parted more significantly puts him into a depression.

I think you will have to weigh which seems more helpful to him and then give it a try. I hope he keeps getting stronger! I'm thinking of you!

[bouncy]

If he's lost some sight, I wonder whether changing the layout may confuse him even more? Maybe best to stick with what is familiar to him. If he finds he can't find things or go places, it might stress him out even more. Regards ramps, is there any way you can make them longer, so it's less of an incline for him?

It's so hard to know what to do for the best but, as his loving mum, you'll know when he's had enough.

[yasmin]

I agree that it might be best to keep the cage layout as close to how it is as possible ... with modifications. What I did for Makoto (sounds like Makoto is in a similar situation as Chester – Makoto is continuing to lose more of his sight, and his tilt has worsened, but he doesn't fall over any more) is put up barriers on the edge of his ledges so that he couldn't just tip over and fall off. We also had railings on the the higher level ramp. The Critter Nation cage is great because the ramps are wide. The biggest issue was his wheel. I made sure that it was as low to the ground as practical, and that there was a lot of soft stuff around for him to land onto (Carefresh, layers of paper towel) if he fell off. I put his water in a shallow bowl but left the water bottle where it was in case he could still drink from that. I also put his food on a plate instead of a bowl.

I also agree that his diet should be made up of what he can/will eat – the most important thing is that he is eating and enjoying as much of his life, in as stress-free of a way, as possible.

[moletteuk]

All the options for altering his housing sound valid, I think only you can decide. We just put longer, easier ramps in for Molly and they seemed to work well. Perhaps you could put sides on the ramps so he can lean as he uses them? I think after several years it can be difficult for them to get used to things in new places, we added a second water bottle for Molly on a higher shelf, but it has hardly been used at all, even though they all hang out on that shelf often.

I also think it's a good idea to feed anything he will eat. Keeping a decent variety might help tempt him too, Molly would only eat a little bit of each thing, but if we offered enough things she would eat quite a bit. Have you tried some bird seed with different small grains in? She also carried on eating the tastier oil seeds like niger, sesame, hemp, safflower, linseed, and carried on nibbling forage and in particular fresh grass.

[winic1]

I'm thinking that maybe for now we will just close off the ramp to the bottom layer, as that is easiest to do, and not worry about opening it up to the other boys yet. That gives Chester the top and middle half-shelves of his portion. And now that the latest snowstorm has melted, I'll go look outside and find a long, wide chunk of tree bark to make a wider ramp down between levels (right now it's a series of tree chunks or a branch-bark combo). Big bark ramps are great, they have texture for better grip. I clean them, then bake them to make sure any living thing is killed, and it also hardens them making them more chew-resistant (last longer). If he doesn't seem too stressed by the reduced area, then maybe we'll add in an extension to the top level so it's pretty much just all flat for him.
He gave up using a wheel many months ago. Chester was never the athlete, Chitter was, Chester's use of the wheel was kind of: stride stride, pause, look around, stride, pause, striiide, wander away to eat or rearrange the hut.... So we don't have to worry about that, he doesn't even have one in his portion anymore.
For seeds I give them a bird seed Soak and Sprout mix, it has all kinds of degu-good seeds in it, no pellets, no fillers, no coatings because it's designed to be soaked seed and those additives would mess that up. He's eating most all of it except the safflower seeds. There is no fresh grass or forage available here yet, another month before leaves come out, and only a few pathetic strands of grass have greened up, or were before this weekends' snow and ice storms. He's NEVER accepted fresh veggies, so I have the dried ones, and various hays, some with herbs or flowers, and dried rose petals, and rolled oats, and oat groats, and a few dried tree leaves left from last year.
Some days he looks better, some days, not so much.

[bouncy]

Thinking about tree bark, depending on the diameter of the piece, it could in itself not only make a wider ramp, but naturally provide sides too?

Love your description of his wheel Activity