Spaying Females???

[winic1]

Was just looking through Hoobly.com to see what the degu-for-rehoming market is like over here (bad!  all but one ad for rehoming/wanted are many many hundreds of miles from me).

came across one add, only a few hours away, of someone looking to rehome 3 SPAYED females!

Finding a vet who even knows what a degu is, here, is rare.  Someone, tho, found a vet to spay them?  Since males have internal testes, it's different and difficult to neuter them, compared to other rodents like rats.  But would females be the same as, say, rats?  Would there be the chance that a decent exotics vet here would be experienced enough to neuter the females, instead of the unfamiliar technique of the males?

I know it's a very serious thing to do to the animal, but if I end up with a large litter, and I can't find them homes because no one here knows what they are and certainly won't understand their needs vs a simple hamster, which is familiar, could this be something to look into?

Anyone have experience on this?  Does it mess up the female biology to where it ruins quality of life, or anything like that?

[deguconvert]

I really don't know, Winic, but from all I've heard on here, females have a more difficult time with the surgery than the males do. I don't know why that is . . .but that is what I have heard. You would have to do some investigating with several different veterinary practices I suspect.

[winic1]

Interesting....evidently spaying female rats is not uncommon, and at least one study showed that it greatly decreased the incidence of mammary and pituitary tumors, (like cut the rate to 1/10th) and the few spayed rats in the study who did get tumors got them significantly later in life.

If there's a good rat vet in the region, this might indeed be something to look into. It's definitely a significant surgery, however a bigger surgery (spaying female) by a very experienced vet is probably better than a lesser surgery (neutering male) by a completely inexperienced vet.

If Phil is Philomena (Or Phyllis, or Philicia), and we have babies we can't find a home for, this might indeed be something to explore.