Guinea pig food

[Cherpi]

Can a Degu eat sugar free Guinea pig food?

EDIT: Can they bathe in just normal sand or does it have to be special Degu sand?

[nickymills30]

some people do give their goo's gerty guinea pig food, mine will only eat nuggets, but when you get your goo's you could try them xx

[smux]

Chinchilla dust, or sepolita, is the type they use. It's called chinchilla sand by some people but really it's the dust in it that does most of the work and gets the oils out of the fur. The cheapest price is for a bulk bag of 20kg (will last a LONG LONG time) from cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sepolita-Chinchilla-Dust-Sand-Best-Quality-20Kg-/110467758769 (total price with delivery is £17) and interestingly it's sold by a Johnathan Hopewell...I'm wondering if it's the same John Hopewell who makes cages, it probably is.

Now, 20kg for £17 is 85p per kg, compare that to P@H who sell a 3kg bag for £3.99...approximately £1.33 per kg means P@H is almost half the price again. If you have a P@H nearby, feel free to get from them, but if you have to get it delivered then eBay really is the best option because you can get tons of better deals there as long as you don't mind a bit of bulk :-)

As for food (also available on eBay in bulk, again a lot cheaper, I posted it in the food & feeding section), it depends on the type of guinea pig food you buy. Certain foods contain all sorts of ingredients like nuts, sunflower seeds, sweetcorn and allsorts, some of which are bad for degus in large amounts and good as treats but are fed to guinea pigs in abundance...gerty guinea pig is one that degutopia recommends as the ingredients have been thoroughly checked through and declared degu-safe, but if you can get a different brand cheaply (like in the pound shops) then take a picture of the food and we'll endeavour (or at least do our best) to point out the bits they can't have. Once you've spent time picking the bad bits out and checking the rest to make sure it's all good bits, you can decide if you want to do that again or not.

As well as the choice of degu nuggets and guinea pig food, there is also roughage meals like "Degu Jr" make, one supplier of which is zooplus. When I first got my degus, I started with this food mostly because zooplus gave me a percentage off my first order.
www.zooplus.co.uk/shop/small_pets/food/degu is the link, and it's degu special and degu premium, but NOTICE the price is a hell of a lot higher than nuggets or gerty guinea pig...however, if you really love the little guys, it is well worth you buying a small bag of this at least and supplementing their meals with it. I think I got a 10kg bag and it lasted a while for my boys but I switched to nuggets after as it was a lot cheaper, then I switched to gerty guinea pig because P@H went too far and I gave up buying there and also because it was again a lot cheaper the way I was buying it in bulk.

You might find that when you get your degus you'll be able to also get some supplies from the person you get them from if you give them some warning...if it was from me, I'd be able to provide a 2.5kg bag of the gerty guinea pig food for about £3 and probably some of the 20kg sepolita bag (I haven't got any yet, but I plan to buy some in bulk from them soon) for whatever it costed me, when my supplies run out I just order more online so it wouldn't bother me :-)

Edit: Oh, and you SHOULD ask the person you get them from to give you at LEAST a small bagful of whatever food they eat so if it's different to what you plan to give them you either have enough time to source the right food or you can transition them over slowly to the food you do have (if you source their food you could give them a mix of yours and theirs :-))