Why can't degus eat chinchilla food?

[cleocat]

I've been feeding my goos chinchilla pellets for a while now (I thought they were the best because they are almost sugar free) but I've just read in a web article that you shouldn't feed them chin food?! The article didn't specify why not, and I tried googling it to find out but I couldn't get any answers. So can someone tell me why chin food is bad? I'm going to switch them onto guinea pig excel pellets from now on, but I'd just like to know.
Thanks guys

[emz]

Degutopia says:

"As an alternative, some owners feed their degus chinchilla pellets, or a mixture of these with guinea pig food. This is perfectly safe and provides a bit of variety. However, avoid feeding your degus chinchilla mix, as these feeds often contain pieces of dried fruit which is not suitable for your degus to regularly consume. " (www.degutopia.co.uk/degudiet.htm)

They also recommend excel chinchilla as one of the suggested foods.

Perhaps it depends on the brand you use, what sort of chin pellets are you using and what do they contain? Is it possible you saw an article mentioning chin mix rather than chin pellets? Do you still have the article?

[cleocat]

Yeah I was thinking they might have meant mix but they did say "pellets", I guess they just used the wrong term. I just wanted to make sure though! I was feeding them the Excell chin pellets before so I think I will just keep doing that. I'm reluctant to switch them to guinea food again because I'm worried about the risk of diabetes so this is reassuring

[puppy00]

Uh oh... So I should stop feeding my degus chinchilla mix... Got it.

[emz]

Oh dear, you should!

You can always post up the ingredients and we can see what it's like. You may be lucky in that it doesn#t have that much sugar.

I'd recommend switching to something like gerty if your degus love mix over pellets.