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Post by Jus on Feb 10, 2012 18:18:24 GMT
Hey hey, I'm Jus and myself and my partner have one degu called Spook. We bought two together just under three years ago, but unfortunately her sister Eddy passed away just over a year ago. So far, our experience keeping degus has been so wonderful and rewarding and we're just excited to have a big enough house to keep a colony rather than just a pair. We started considering introduction a few months ago but until now haven't had time or space to try it. But we finally took the plunge and posted looking for a baby to keep Spook company and quickly received a reply offering us a 15 week old female from a lovely family nearby. 15 weeks is a little older than we had hoped for, but we're thrilled to have this opportunity for Spooks' sake. As 15 weeks is somewhere between puphood and adulthood, we were unsure on which introduction technique to use, so we decided to try a bit of both; possibly slightly faster than if we were introducing an adult, but slower than if it were a young pup. The new cage for temporarily housing the new baby has been built and populated with bedding and toys and we're going to clean Spook out tomorrow. We're picking the new pup up on Sunday. I'm so excited! If anyone has any really good tips on introduction, or constructive stories and advice, I'd love to hear them, as it is our first time and I'm a little nervous about the possibility it wont work. Other than that, wish me luck and I'll send an update next week! Attachments:
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Post by jenowuk on Feb 10, 2012 19:30:39 GMT
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Post by smithomatic on Feb 13, 2012 21:37:46 GMT
Although this doesnt really work for things like bath tub introductions, I have found it useful to keep the room cool and dim. When in the same cage together this encourages them to huddle together for warmth, wether they like each other or not  Still expect some dominance behaviour; mounting, boxing, chasing, etc - I have found that keeping the room cool speeds up this phase, my degus were more in the mood for sitting near each other for warmth than fighting after about 30mins. Obviously this has only worked for me and is not a technique I have ever heard of being used before I thought about it the other day, but hey ho - worth a try  |
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Post by Jus on Feb 14, 2012 13:11:02 GMT
Aha! That's genius thanks smithomatic =] Fortunately our flat is freezing all the time anyway! Their first meet went really well, I'll try that for the next one =]
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Post by Jus on Feb 15, 2012 10:57:36 GMT
The girls are all getting on beautifully! We've had them out in the run repeatedly and now they're gettin on we keep putting them all in Spooks cage for a couple of hours. They've never fought yet, but we're still a bit nervous about leaving them all in together unattended. The only disagreement so far was over food. Spook objected to the babies eating out of her food bowl, but this is easily solved if we just put it another food bowl for the babies. They all sit at the bars overnight trying to get to eachother and they're chittering and chattering all the time. All the babies seem to want to do is groom Spook all the time. She has been alone for a while so maybe they know she hasn't had a good grooming in some time. We were a little bit worried as Spook only seems to interact with one of them at a time, but then we realised that she does still interact with both of them, just separately. I think she finds two babies a bit full on and hard work all at once. When we came to separate them back into their own cages last night Spook and one of the babies were cuddling in the hammock (well, Spook was squashing one of the babies in the hammock) and when I put them in this morning, she has spent some time with the other one grooming eachother. I've taken the food bowl out this morning and we're going to feed them at a given time with separate bowls for the next couple of days, to get them used to all eating together, then move the bowls gradually closer together with each mealtime to try and get Spook to stop being so grumpy about it. We were given one pale coloured baby and one darker baby. My partner has named the darker baby Taryn, but the pale on is still being referred to as Paley... I need a name soon. I can't thank everyone on here enough for the information tips and advice that have helped us along the way. As with everything, it's taken a lot of improvisation and just trying to work out how the degus want to do it, but it's been nothing but successful so far =]
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Post by deguconvert on Feb 15, 2012 15:54:21 GMT
WOOHOO!! I am so pleased for you!! I love to read how they are doing together, all the grooming and chatting etc. It's simply wonderful!
As for the feeding bowl, the heirarchy of any colony tends to be enforced with who eats first, second, third, and so forth. This is so with degus. It has been in the past that we would recommend putting in multiple bowls of food to reduce fighting, but this has come under discussion of late. There is some thought that perhaps multiple bowls of food where they can all eat simultaneously without conflict, adds to the imbalance of power between the degus and therefore can increase the occurances of dominance fighting. This makes sense, since food is one of the areas where dominance and position within the colony is clearly indicated within wild colonies. Now . . . I am not telling you to have only the one bowl. Really, I just wanted you to be aware of this discussion and the reasoning around it, and then to do what you feel is the right thing. Our cage still has three bowls for feeding, but that is because they are small and don't contain individually what all our degus need.
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Post by Jus on Feb 19, 2012 21:24:05 GMT
Thanks deguconvert. The squabbling briefly escalated for a day or two where we considered separating them, but decided it might be better to keep a close eye on them and let them work it out, rather than risk going back a step and them having to start working out the pecking order all over again. On the same logic, we did decide to remove the extra food bowl. Since then the squabbling has lessened dramatically so now we just hear the occasional indignant squeak from Spook when one of them steps out of line and is quickly putr back in their place. Hopefully it's all sorted now!
One of the babies has been named Taryn by my partner, an old English name meaning "From the high hills," Unfortunately the pale one is still being referred to as "Paley" as, despite my many ideas I have not come up with anything suitably fitting for the little madam. Hopefully I will have a stroke of inspiration before "Paley" sticks, but I think it may be too late already.
Thanks again for the advice and help from everyone on the forum =]
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Post by Kins on Feb 20, 2012 10:19:39 GMT
You could call Paley 'Pal' for short, that's quite cute..?
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Post by deguconvert on Feb 20, 2012 21:48:41 GMT
Just looked for synonyms of pale, and most of them . . . if not all . . . are NOT appropriate. LOL! Ghastly . . . deathly, spectral, pallid, sallow . . . LOL! One if the words is "Blanched" which made me think of the name Blanch . . . and I wondered . . . did that name for women come into being because there were newborn girls that were extremely pale in skin tone??? Anyway . . . not any easy description to transform into a name. ;D |
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Post by Jus on Feb 28, 2012 23:39:02 GMT
The degus have been fully christened Taryn and Xanthe, I just have to stop calling the latter Paley haha! Next project, extending the existing cage! They spend most of the daytimes out in the run anyway but a lovely mahoosive cage would be lovely. The run has now been opened up and encloses a whole corner of the room so they have plenty of play space, and Xanthe has discovered she can jump out of it already. We don't like Spook running free as being on the floor seems to make her very skittish and unhappy and she wont come back, but the babies are perfectly happy to run around on the floor just exploring (not chewing things they shouldn't be!) and come back when you shout them, so we aren't too bothered about them getting out of the run. The most hilarious part was when Xanthe jumped out, ran around for a while then presumably got bored and lonely so she jumped back in!
The scrapping seems to have settled down a bit, there's still the occasional squeaking and mounting a boxing between Spook and Xanthe but it's far less agitated than before and looks more like day to day interactions between friends than agitated getting to know one another, so we aren't particularly worried about it anymore. I think at this stage we can call our introduction a success! All I'm worried about now is cleaning them out, but Spook and Xanthe seem to have decided to share top goo position depending on the day of the week, and hopefully cleaning them out won't antagonise them any more. I think really Spook is just bored of disciplining her two unruly children now and has allowed them to run wild.
Most of all we are just pleased everything has worked out. The babies are fully shining their own little personalities now, have bonded with Spook and have already bonded with me and Duncan too, which is wonderful. They're perfectly happy to be stroked and cuddled, although sometimes they sit still for a short while then decide they would rather us as a climbing frame which is hilarious because I'm ticklish!
So thanks to NorthernSoul for our wonderful gift of baby goos! They have made us so happy =]
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Post by deguconvert on Feb 29, 2012 5:39:45 GMT
What a wonderful report!! Things are sounding so great! I'm very happy for you all!!!
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