Weaning...can I finish early?

[smux]

As some may know, Theresa's second brood of babies are at the 4 week mark (of 6 weeks). As they may also know, I have Dante in the other room sitting sad without his brother who died a little after these little guys were born (so, for a short time, I was up to 15 degus). As they may ALSO know, Marccc has also had a more recent loss of a similar nature to me and Dante.

So, my question is this...assuming the 3 new babies are all boys (and I will definitely check before continuing with any of this) is there anything stopping me from placing them in with Dante/Lebowski (Marccc's remaining degu) 2 weeks early?

Here's what they ARE doing:
Eating solids
Drinking water
Playing together
Playing dominance
Tending to the bed area (nest box) by taking tissue in
Eating hay/alfalfa...they love their mini alfalfa bales

Here's what they're not doing:
Dustbathing. They just sit in it and sniff or eat, or get in the way while the girls do their bathing thing
Drinking mum's milk...They switched to solids a long time back, and as far as I am aware they haven't been drinking mum's milk for at least the past 2 or 3 weeks.
Eating droppings. They've already done a little of this. (For those who don't know and are reading this, this is actually a fairly important part of their maturity, it builds up immunities in their body as they're eating those dropped by mum or their sisters...these immunities would be passed to them normally from mum through the umbilical but when they were born that link was of course severed...it was then present in her milk, but once they move to solids they need to start that process going)

My plan is to give Marccc 2 of them so he has 3 and put the remaining boy in with Dante. When the other girl has her babies, any males will go in with Dante as well to keep him company (any females stay with Theresa if I don't find homes for them)...and hopefully that will be the LAST of the babies!

[nickymills30]

when my friend had her babies, declan, my male, was taken away from his mom at 4 weeks, and kept with his dad until 7 weeks, when he came to me. I also have a group of babies, who where around 5 weeks old, when the baby boy was taken from his mom, and he is healthy. xx

[arumanii]

As you know I recently (well... September I think so not all that recently!) ended up with two orphan pups.

They were given puppy formula until a surrogate female could be rented.

I also looked for the typical signs like you - but wasn't all that confident they'd finished taking milk from her as she wasn't very tame. Separated them after about two weeks - so probably at the three week mark overall.

But, to make sure I stuck the puppy formula (warm) in a bowl each morning to see what they'd take. The first few days they were interested enough to lap up some of it so 'fake mummy' (as she became nicknamed) went back in each evening in case they wanted to nurse.

Long and short of it is: they should be fine and knowing you, you'll spot any issues long before they become real issues if any occur!

Good luck to Dante getting the new one trained to do things his way!

[smux]

Many thanks...have actually been giving Dante time with him up until he is able to have the guys in with him permanently (despite the fact that he ends up more depressed when the guy has to leave) so I've seen how much fun they all have together :-)

There has been a minor issue with the wheel, the baby loves it but so does Dante and it seems he's got used to just jumping in it and running and he doesn't care that the baby is in there already...He hasn't got seriously hurt yet, but I'm not 100% sure what to do yet...it's one of those open plan wheels with both sides open and two bars coming around to hold it as it spins, the ones many degus have had accidents on but these boys (Dante and Elsevier) weren't in any danger in as they'd already lost their tails previously. The baby REALLY loves it as he's never seen a wheel before, I still have yet to buy replacement ones for any of the other cages, it's planned for the new year. The baby usually gets out safely, but it depends which way he has to escape from and he may get trapped. I am probably going to remove the wheel at first, and replace it later.

Just to be 100% sure for everyone, when I say weaning I mean the whole process of learning from mum...generally it's the weaning process, even though it covers everything else like dustbathing. I am confident that Dante will teach him that, and if not then his dad will if I give him time with dad every so often :-)

Oh, and another thing I should have added to the list of things he DOES do...grooming other degus, he grooms Dante. This guy is also the only one who comes to me and climbs out of the cage, the other two aren't so sure of me :-)

[arumanii]

Ahhhh - sounds like a good match.

Good luck!

[smux]

Kinda lucky that Marccc now doesn't need the babies, because I've checked and it's the opposite of what Theresa had before...then it was 2 girls and a boy and now it's been 2 boys and a girl. The girl is still in with Theresa and the girls, and the two boys are in with Dante and I am hoping that if I get the little guy from Canterbury that he gets on well with Dante AND the babies. If Dante and him get on fine then the boys may be rehomed over Christmas, and the girl may also be rehomed. Won't go into details, but money issues aren't as bad as they were and it is likely we'll be kitting out all the degu cages with wheels and a bunch of toys and chew sticks and the like...there has been a lump sum of close to £1000 and also there will also be a steady amount of extra money (about £50 a week more) from now on, so costs to feed them all and keep them happy isn't so much of a worry :-)

Edit: Added a comma for readability

[nickymills30]

thats fab news about money. It horrible when you have money worries, i;m too waiting for a largish pay out, a tax rebate, and its driving me mad!! I thought i;d have it for xmas, but it doesn't look like it know, but i;ve got all my pressies, for the kids, so when it does come, my lot will be really spoilt lol x