How to monitor food for just one degu in the cage?

[teemu]

Thanks, Molette, this is good advice. I haven't been able to check her glucose, since I have not actually found any of those strips being sold here at all. I don't really think there is a high risk of diabetes since there are no symptoms (no excess drinking or urination, eye issues etc), and the reason she is so thin is quite clearly that she concretely just eats very little. I can't even keep any pellets in the cage since Limppu will eat everything immediately and actually bully Suti if she tries to get any. That's why it's been such a relief that I found a way to get her to eat in peace.

I have keto strips, but that likely does not help at all. I have actually tried the Supreme Recovery, but she just doesn't like it at all and ignores it (And I'd really want to avoid forcefeeding unless absolutely necessary). At the moment she is 220g and quite lean. The degus here are quite small compared to some others, so it's not outrageously light, but she is leaner than everyone else here.

I did not actually know about that brand of pellets, since it hasn't come up in any store I've visited. But a quick search showed that it is available at some others, so I actually ordered a bag to test if they would be more enticing. All the reviews on the site were from people saying that this is the brand that never stays long in the bowls, so that seems like a very promising thing.

Oh, pelleted forage is actually also an interesting point, since I'm familiar with the stuff from other animals (horses mainly, I'm very familiar with horses). If I can find some available in a variety that is suitable for her, it might also help.

[moletteuk]

I agree appetite and possibly hormones of some kind are more likely issues than diabetes, it would have just been nice to completely rule it out, not worth pursuing at this point if you can't get the strips.

Good to hear she is 220g, especially with her being from a fairly small stature group of degus, that's not too bad. The excess activity to the point of exhaustion makes me think hormone issue (if we are ruling out diabetes), like thryoid (I'm there could be other culprits), probably impossible to know. My degus gave the impression they were aware of the links between food, activity and body weight. And the only time I saw my degus exercise to extreme fatigue was when they were in heat.

Hopefully she will like the new food, it's worth a try anyway, I had to switch up pellet brands quite a bit to keep them interested.

A couple of the appropriate Pre Alpin products are at the bottom of the Commercial food chart deguworld.proboards.com/thread/17365/commercial-food-chart if they still make them with the same names it might save you some time as I think they do a bewildering array of products. Other places might sell similar things by other brands, I think Hansemanns used to sell non branded ones.

Do you use a heatpad of any kind? They can be useful for encouraging rest.

[teemu]

Yes, it essentially feels like she is always in some sort of a "half heat", essentially. She may not be as fussy, but she is clearly often quite frustrated and always wants to just do things. She has also learned that the fall from the cage door to the floor is too small to hurt her (it's about knee height from the door, so it really isn't dangerous for her), so nowadays if the door is opened, she will attempt to just run off the edge, totally ignoring everything else. It's not even any kind of a jump, she just quite literally runs out and tries to hit the floor running as well. And yet when she's outside she just wanders around the floor and does not even resist if I pick her up. It's a bit odd.

I only have two heat pads between three cages right now, since one got destroyed last winter. I've had one for Pulla since he's a senior and feels the chill easily, and one for Kaneli since she is all alone. However, Kaneli really hasn't taken to hers and ignores it most of the time, so I'm thinking I should give it to the girls until I can get a third one.

[teemu]

Suti has now started doing this really problematic thing where she does not eat while Limppu is out of the cage. She only starts stashing food like mad, and then starts eating what she has stashed in a panic when Limppu comes back. It's like she feels the need to hoard so that there will be food... and then when Limppu comes back she immediately knows that she will find all of it, so it has to be eaten NOW. And of course Limppu is really intrested and that causes a lot of fighting now.

I'm going to take her for a vet visit soon just so we can be sure that there is nothing wrong with her teeth now, and if possible to check for other issues. For now, I've given her some of Pulla's special mix, which is Science Supreme Recovery Plus mixed in with peanut butter and ground up pellets. Unsurprisingly, the peanut butter is enough to get her to eat even outside the cage, so hopefully that will get some calories in her. She also eats treats very readily and as much as she is given (but only the right kind, she doesn't care about certain seeds and so on), so we'll make do with her in any case.

(Limppu can smell the peanut butter in her breath, though, so it's clear she knows that others are getting something on the sly...)