Surprise babies!

[marissakw]

Hello all. Well i have had my three degu GIRLS for about 2 months now. Turns out one must be a boy. Marty is now the proud momma of 5 babies. They were unexpected but very welcome. They are adorable and I couldn't be happier.

But i have several questions

1) Dad is not interested AT ALL. In fact mom and dad don't get along at ALL now, it's been 48 hours and the only time i have seen him involved is when one of the babies ended up on the bottom level and he seemed to protect it.

2) Our other female Geri seems to have gotten big FAST but she is only 5 months old. Very round. She isn't very tame so i can't feel for babies. But Geri and Frenchy (my male, i know i need to probably change the name now) have only been together 2 months, so maybe she just isn't far along. Now Frenchy and Geri turn their backs to Marty (the new mom) every time she comes near, she even tries to initiate grooming, and they ignore her. I feel bad for her.

3) Marty is now very tame since she has had the babies, she allows me to put my hand in the nest, take the babies out and pet her, where before she was the most evil

Any advice would be great!

[ra]

Take minute to read Aimeelou's Basics of Babies in the thread above.

Actually you should have taken the male out of the cage for a short period of time so he could not re-impregnate Marty. He may not be particularly interested in the babies because Marty has Geri to help.

It does sound as though Geri will soon be giving birth too. Oh dear, what will you do with all those Degus? The females can become pregnant at an early age.

You will want to separate boys from girls when they reach weaning age approximately 6 weeks. At that time you can put Frenchy with all the boys. The girls can stay with Marty and Geri.

[marissakw]

Well Geri isn't helping at all. Momma is really doing it all by herself. She is becoming more social with the other two, but they still won't come up top and help out with the kids. I have been trying to help as much as possible with giving them things to nest with. I believe that Frenchy (the male) is nesting again for Geri. What a dead beat dad he is!!! Why should i separate the males and females at such an early age? Everything i have read thus far says that they do not reach breeding age until several months.

As for what I am going to do with all the babies, I have already started finding good homes for them for when they can leave home. In the mean time i am working on a degu home expansion project.

[krazypara3165]

it has been known on many occasions that degu's can become "active" after 6 weeks and im sure many people on this forum have experienced this. as for the cage expansion im sure there going to love the extra space!

[marissakw]

Ok so NEW update! Geri is the mother, i spent a lot of time watching them and realized...i had the wrong one the whole time (there is one distinguishing mark on Geri that i realized i had been missing) So after realizing this, we scooped out Frenchy (the supposed "father) and Marty. THEY ARE BOTH FEMALES. So it turns out Geri is a single mother, we received her from the breeder pregnant at 10 weeks hold, which makes sense why she is so protective, she is doing it on her own.