Post by thegrouchybeast on Feb 23, 2006 15:16:02 GMT
Hi! I'm new, so I thought I'd make an introductory post. I hope this is the right place to put it.
I live in Leicester, in the UK. I first saw degus when I visited my mum and dad in Yorkshire last Easter, and we went to an animal sanctuary. They had two degus there, which were so cute that when I got home I Googled to find out more about them. Their relatively long lifespan really appealed, because I kept rats for several years but eventually gave them up because I couldn't cope with losing them so frequently. So far, touch wood, my optimism has been justified -- we've had the degus since April last year, with not one vet visit required.
We have three female degus, called FatOne, Scoop and Tricksy. Because they're rescues, I'm not quite sure how old they are -- the place we got them from said they were 'about six months old' but didn't know exactly.
I used to have a webcam, but it isn't working at the moment. You can see the degus and their home here:
pics.livejournal.com/ms_manna/gallery/00003d9b
The first cage pics are from a day or two after we got them. There's a tiny plastic wheel which was previously scorned by my rats (they looked at it, and looked at me, and I could see them thinking 'you must be bloody joking! run? why would we want to do that? we're going back to sleep.') They now have the nice big John Hopewell wheel you can see in the cage Mark II pictures, along with various pine furnishings which they are slowly chewing to pieces.
They're very sweet natured, although FatOne is a little more nervous than the others (she had a traumatic escape experience which led to her being on the loose in the house for more than a day in the company of two cats, and ever since then she's regarded the cage door as a Portal to Hell). They only ever fight over food, which is mostly a lot of tail waving and angry-radio squeaking, and a bit of scuffling -- I've never seen them actually bite one another. Most of the time (when there isn't food to fight about) they're curled up in a heap together.
To eat, they get a mix of chinchilla pellets and guinea pig pellets, plus lots of Timothy hay and dried grass from Chinchillas2Home. I hand feed them at least some of the pellets every day, so that they have to come out onto my hands. The only treats they get are occasional popcorn kernels and tiny bits of ryvita. Following the recommendations on here I've ordered some degu mix from Zooplus, along with some of their dried plant mixes. I hope they'll enjoy it as much as other people's degus have.
They used to have Biocatalet on the floor of the cage, but after a few months we switched to Megazorb, which is much softer for little paws. It's rather like Carefresh, but *much* cheaper than either Biocatalet or Carefresh. The only downside to it is that, being fairly light, it's easily kicked out of the cage all over the floor when the girls decide that they urgently needs to rearrange the cage. To solve that, we expanded the cage by adding a glass fish tank we had spare. They can now dig to their hearts' content and keep the litter *inside*. Plus, I think the extra space makes them happier -- they don't seem to run on the wheel so much now.
And, wow, that was a long post! I think I'll stop now. :-)
I live in Leicester, in the UK. I first saw degus when I visited my mum and dad in Yorkshire last Easter, and we went to an animal sanctuary. They had two degus there, which were so cute that when I got home I Googled to find out more about them. Their relatively long lifespan really appealed, because I kept rats for several years but eventually gave them up because I couldn't cope with losing them so frequently. So far, touch wood, my optimism has been justified -- we've had the degus since April last year, with not one vet visit required.
We have three female degus, called FatOne, Scoop and Tricksy. Because they're rescues, I'm not quite sure how old they are -- the place we got them from said they were 'about six months old' but didn't know exactly.
I used to have a webcam, but it isn't working at the moment. You can see the degus and their home here:
pics.livejournal.com/ms_manna/gallery/00003d9b
The first cage pics are from a day or two after we got them. There's a tiny plastic wheel which was previously scorned by my rats (they looked at it, and looked at me, and I could see them thinking 'you must be bloody joking! run? why would we want to do that? we're going back to sleep.') They now have the nice big John Hopewell wheel you can see in the cage Mark II pictures, along with various pine furnishings which they are slowly chewing to pieces.
They're very sweet natured, although FatOne is a little more nervous than the others (she had a traumatic escape experience which led to her being on the loose in the house for more than a day in the company of two cats, and ever since then she's regarded the cage door as a Portal to Hell). They only ever fight over food, which is mostly a lot of tail waving and angry-radio squeaking, and a bit of scuffling -- I've never seen them actually bite one another. Most of the time (when there isn't food to fight about) they're curled up in a heap together.
To eat, they get a mix of chinchilla pellets and guinea pig pellets, plus lots of Timothy hay and dried grass from Chinchillas2Home. I hand feed them at least some of the pellets every day, so that they have to come out onto my hands. The only treats they get are occasional popcorn kernels and tiny bits of ryvita. Following the recommendations on here I've ordered some degu mix from Zooplus, along with some of their dried plant mixes. I hope they'll enjoy it as much as other people's degus have.
They used to have Biocatalet on the floor of the cage, but after a few months we switched to Megazorb, which is much softer for little paws. It's rather like Carefresh, but *much* cheaper than either Biocatalet or Carefresh. The only downside to it is that, being fairly light, it's easily kicked out of the cage all over the floor when the girls decide that they urgently needs to rearrange the cage. To solve that, we expanded the cage by adding a glass fish tank we had spare. They can now dig to their hearts' content and keep the litter *inside*. Plus, I think the extra space makes them happier -- they don't seem to run on the wheel so much now.
And, wow, that was a long post! I think I'll stop now. :-)