Hello from Ro

[shomoca]

Hi all, We have our goos for over 1.5 months now. Ina and Lala say hi  

cdn1.imggmi.com/uploads/2019/2/17/4f43a07065a86255f747ebe303d5987a-full.jpg


I know the cage is a little small for them but they have aprox 1h /day outside.  I plan a little upgrade in the future. Also the wheel is no good, I know, I will change it in the near future. I need to find right mats to do a tic-tac wheel..
i.imgur.com/AygaiJw.jpg

Just wanted to say hi to the forum! I've read a lot of great info here, it's very well documented. Congrats to all that shared their knowledge! 

[savvy]

Welcome to the forum it's lovely to meet you all.

You are right that the cage is way too small, from what I can see,its a thickets cage. If you are looking for a short term extension to make it a bigger, but need to do it quickly, you can get a second hand thickets cage and add it on to your original one. Either to the side or above. You can usually get them for about £20 second hand.

The wheel should come out asap, I'm sorry, but that wheel is so dangerous it should be banned. The gaps between the bars can easily trap and break little legs, and the bars across the wheel have a scissor action when the wheel is in motion. Please, please, remove it!

[moletteuk]

Hi and welcome to the forum We look forward to getting to know you and your degus.

We are always happy to help with ideas for cage upgrades and take into account limited funds. I think the wheel should come out as a priority as those slotted ones commonly cause broken legs. We have info on wheel making here deguworld.proboards.com/thread/18716/accessories-make-buy or you mention the tic tac wheels which seem to be the best choice in GB.

[shomoca]

Hi,

Thank you for your warm welcomes.
I too think the wheel should be changed first. Thank you for the link I will take a look. I plan adding a new one ASAP.

[deguconvert]

Hello, Shomoca! Welcome to the forum!! Very lovely to meet you, and your two sweet goos!

As you already know . . . your cage is indeed too small. It sounds like you have been reading a lot, so you will have come across the information that being in a cage too small can cause fighting between cage mates to escalate beyond the range of normal, as well as causing other physical and mental maladies. What do you hope/plan to do for increasing the cage size? Are you interested in DIY at all?

[shomoca]

Feb 17, 2019 18:27:37 GMT deguconvert said:

Hello, Shomoca! Welcome to the forum!! Very lovely to meet you, and your two sweet goos!

As you already know . . . your cage is indeed too small. It sounds like you have been reading a lot, so you will have come across the information that being in a cage too small can cause fighting between cage mates to escalate beyond the range of normal, as well as causing other physical and mental maladies. What do you hope/plan to do for increasing the cage size? Are you interested in DIY at all?

Hi, well my main problem is that I live in a rented apartment. If it was my house I would've build my goos a biiig cozy crib. 
I want to add another cage on top on this one. Adding one to the sides takes up much more space. 
I want my build to be modular, meaning I want to be able to mount/dismount it very easy. 
I searched for second hand cages but couldn't find one that is big enough and afordable (my buget is limited).  What is the minimum size you recommend to add to this cage?  ( Of course the biggerthe better ). 

As an example of what I want to do is this : 
www.olx.ro/oferta/vand-cusca-rozatoare-IDbQvU9.html#3b11388e7c

From   this picture you can see that the cage has 2 types of metal bars. The ones from the original cage (petshop said it's of for degus but when I got home my goos could get out like there was noghitng there. I got mad so i went and bought a metal mesh and add it to the cage. I still have 800 cm x 50 cm left from it so I can use that to build a new cage but I need to find how to build a strong framework to add the mesh to. Like I said, I want to have everything modular, very easy to disassemble.

Right now my main concern is a new wheel.. I simply cannot find on any sites from Ro one that suits my goos. 
I found a lot of websites from uk, some of them don't ship to Romania and the ones that do have a high shipping cost. I think I will try to build one using a plastic bucket - minimum of 28 cm diameter..

PS: Sorry for my English! 

[moletteuk]

I didn't realise Ro meant Romania!

Unfortunately degus are likely to chew and destroy plastic, so this means your current cage is a risk and a wheel made out of a bucket wouldn't work. Sometimes they go from totally ignoring plastic, to destroying it in a single day. Does the plastic cage base have any ridges or is it completely smooth? They will struggle more to destroy it if it is totally smooth.

I don't know what size cage you currently have, but two degus need a minimum of 12,000 square cm of running area, so this is the equivalent of 3 levels of 100x40cm. Adult degus are usually OK with a bar spacing of 18mm, but you might need 12 to 15mm for young degus, and it does depend how flexible the bars are. You might be able to use alumimium or steel angle profile to make a framework to attach mesh to, or you can use softwood battens if you protect the wood with metal (plasterers angle bead is cheap).

If you think you might be able to make a wheel, an aluminium cake tin is perfect, it should be 30cm minimum diameter, if you can't find a proper bearing you can use a skateboard wheel. You may find a wooden wheel that would do for now, you can get them from Zooplus, I'm not sure if they ship to Romania.

[winic1]

Hi Shomoca, your English is great! I did not realize you were not using your main language.

If you are good at building and creating things, I would suggest that you consider using a set of workshop shelves as the frame to build a cage with. I have often thought of this, but we never got to do it, we have always gone with bought cages instead. But workshop shelves are made of metal, so they cannot be chewed. They are often modular in design so you could arrange to make it in sections that you could take apart as needed. If you put the metal shelves in upside down, you have created sides around the 'floors' to help hold the substrate in. And in the future, if you had more room, you could put the sections side by side to make a wider cage, which they would prefer, instead of stacking them up tall. It should also be easy enough to add extra levels and half-levels to give them more floor space and features to enjoy.

Do get rid of that wheel right away. It is a deathtrap. If for now all you have available is a plastic bucket to make a wheel with, you could try that. They may chew it up, but you would have the spinner and support made already and could put another one on, or use when you can get a metal cake pan to use, that they cannot chew. Another possibility is to make a running saucer, although that takes up much more floor space in the cage.

[deguconvert]

Shomoca, can you tell us what kind of space you have to work with? Maybe even a picture of where you have them or want them. We've been pretty creative in the past, and while our ideas may not always appeal to you, they will give you potential that you might be able to mold to your advantage for your home and situation.

[shomoca]

Hi,


So, regarding the wheel.. I ordered this morning  This Flying Saucer.  It has 30 cm diameter, I know it will take up a lot of floor space but I think it's ok for now. I hope they will learn to use it fast. 
In the future I will try to build a new wheel, but for know I don't quite have a lot of time on my hands.. or maybe if the day had 30 hours I would have 

I saw on tutorials that everybody is using a cake tin.  Almost all products here are like This. So that's why I need to search for an alternative. I also thought that I could use 1 or 2 bearings for the wheel to spin. I have a colleague that is a very handy man, so he might help me build one in the future. Will post photos when that will happen..
I saw the wooden wheel from Zooplus, they do ship to Romania but there is a minimum order  and for that money I think I can build 2 or 3 wheels so I prefer to wait and see if this plastic saucer will do the job for now.

Regarding the cage, ours is 100 x 50 x 45 cm- give or take. Plus what they already have inside I think they have a running surface area of aprox 6500 cm². So from what moletteuk  said I will need to double that. The bar spacing shouldn't be a problem because I have that mesh that I will surely use. 

You might be able to use aluminium or steel angle profile to make a framework to attach mesh to [...]

I thought of that, but I need to do more research .. Maybe I can buy something like This and just attach the mesh.  Either way I want everything to be made out of sections - easy to disassemble. 
Like winic1 said, I cant turn it upside down and create some borders. 
Another idea for the framework I had was to use a Octogon Enclosure for Rabits  but I don't know how stable it will be. 

For the shelves I used before some plywood made of plopar, but that is very soft and goos chew it so it's a no long term material. If I want to use a thicker wood then I need one that is safe, and form what I can see all shops here (not petshops, bit construnction material shops) sell resin wood for building material.   

The Cage is in the corner of the living room. So that corner space is aprox 1.5 x 1.5 m . I can use the whole space. So I was thinking about adding another cage on top of this one and create 2 holes to link them. 


Since they are in the living room and they go outside every day I couldn't stop noticing that some shelves at the bottom of.. well.. all furniture, get chewed.. Do you think if I grease the margins with some lemon is a good idea?  I am pretty sure lemon is toxic but I am thinking that since it's doesn't taste well they will leave the furniture alone..

The main problem is my budget and buying directly from pet shop is very expensive - I don't know how it is in uk, but here at our wages all prices are high, so I will do everything step by step.  Plus that I know (I think) that it's not a good idea to change very often their environment ( adding / removing / moving to another place accessories and shelves).

Thank you all for all your posts and good thoughts! 

[moletteuk]

I would try to avoid more plastic items if you can, I think the saucer will be too small, but it is better for now than the old wheel anyway.
It took us ages to track down the aluminium solid cake tins, they come from a specialise baking shop, but I have seen them more recently on Amazon and ebay, it's probably worth doing some careful google searches, they really are the best thing, especially if you can get a bearing.

You do need to double the space, or more because we don't tend to count smaller shelves. Did you check if the plastic base is smooth? I really would consider making a whole new cage with no plastic. You can use the 'garage' shelves as a base, the disadvantages for you would be that it wouldn't be modular and we had a member on the continent who had mites and found it impossible to get rid of them from the cracks/joins. You could use wood battens to make a frame, if you use really big sqaure bits of wood the degus 'should' just chew the corners off and then the diameter gets too big for them to comfortably chew, or you can protect with metal edging as I mentioned above. You can make almost anything safe for shelving too if you attach an upstand around the perimeter and either replace that when it gets chewed down, or edge with metal. I would be surprised if you can't get kiln dried construction softwood becasue non dried softwood warps and is poor for construction.

Wiping furniture with lemon will probably only put them off for a few seconds. A playpen or room divider is the best way to keep them safe and your furniture safe. Again, see the sticky threads, but sheets of smooth wood joined so they can fold away is the safest option.

Money is mostly quite tight in the UK at the moment too. I understand that it's tempting to go for the cheaper and easier options, but experience on the forum shows that it's usually better and cheaper in the long run to go for the better options as soon as you can so you avoid the expense of the items that don't work long term and have to be replaced again.

Have a look through the later pages of the 'show us your cage' thread for ideas.

[shomoca]

The plastic saucer will arrive today. I am little enthusiastic about it ^_^..

The surface is smooth, I will be monitoring it. But for now the plastic bottom will remain..

Ok, so fair enough not counting the smaller shelves, thought they are better than no shelves. That means I currently have aprox 5000cm²  .
I will continue reading on this forum for cage ideas and now I know I won't use any plastic for this upgrade.. 

What you said about going for better options, you  are right! I think this is something that should apply to our every day lives and not only when we are doing something for our pets. You have a good point and I will reconsider my options.

[Deleted]

Hi!

Does Amazon ship to you?

I use vivariums rather than cages.

Mine are 1.2m long, 60cm deep and 60cm high.

It cost me £109 (not sure what the conversion is), but it’s pretty darn cheap!

We then added a full extra level using melamine board (it’s water proof) and lined all the edges with kiln dried pine to make it safe as melamine is not safe to chew.

We rent. I have 4 of these lol. As long as the cage will move it’s not a problem. No cage needs to be fixed down.

It would be great if we could solve your degus housing arrangements before they fall out big style, because unfortunately it’s pretty much a guarantee they will. Most have us have been there and learnt from similar mistakes.

youtu.be/yM7QSUfeNy0


That’s when we first did them.

This is an update.

youtu.be/b5hoCSdkFec

So you don’t have to buy commercial.

Alternatively, if you’re no good at DIY, you could buy two Vivs and stack them and then cut a hole in the top and bottom and put shelves up to the hole so they can climb through.

This would give you lots of head height in each one to hang lots of toys and beds.

[Deleted]

Take a peek on Amazon. This UK seller ships to Romania.

[moletteuk]

At least with the saucer you will get to see if they are interested in a saucer - some degus love them, others aren't interested at all.

Smaller shelves can work great and can be much loved by degus as good look out places or you can make a low headroom shelf only open on one side and it can make a great nest space. We just don't count them towards overall space to avoid people making setups that are entirely made of small shelves - some people used to think that degus like tall spaces with small shelves so we had to make firm policies to change this opinion. Likewise supervised play in a pen or safe room can greatly increase quality of life for degus, but we encourage this as an extra thing to basic minimum cage size because some people will start out with regular playtimes and then things happen and maybe they don't get round to doing it any more.

So I realise I sound kind of strict and I am mostly bringing you bad news, but I can tell you that most of us have been in your situation, nearly all of us start out with the wrong cage, and I think you are taking the news really well and appreciate the thought you are putting in to getting things right. I can assure you that it will all make sense when you get everything right, your girls will blossom in front of you when they can express all their natural behaviours.


I would recommend a cage with plenty of mesh for ventilaion in countries that can get warmer than UK in the summer, so I'm not sure a viv with glass doors would be a great option for Romania.

[Deleted]

Feb 20, 2019 14:21:53 GMT moletteuk said:

At least with the saucer you will get to see if they are interested in a saucer - some degus love them, others aren't interested at all.

Smaller shelves can work great and can be much loved by degus as good look out places or you can make a low headroom shelf only open on one side and it can make a great nest space. We just don't count them towards overall space to avoid people making setups that are entirely made of small shelves - some people used to think that degus like tall spaces with small shelves so we had to make firm policies to change this opinion. Likewise supervised play in a pen or safe room can greatly increase quality of life for degus, but we encourage this as an extra thing to basic minimum cage size because some people will start out with regular playtimes and then things happen and maybe they don't get round to doing it any more.

So I realise I sound kind of strict and I am mostly bringing you bad news, but I can tell you that most of us have been in your situation, nearly all of us start out with the wrong cage, and I think you are taking the news really well and appreciate the thought you are putting in to getting things right. I can assure you that it will all make sense when you get everything right, your girls will blossom in front of you when they can express all their natural behaviours.


I would recommend a cage with plenty of mesh for ventilaion in countries that can get warmer than UK in the summer, so I'm not sure a viv with glass doors would be a great option for Romania.

Ah, granted I know very little about Romania, I didn’t realise the weather was much different to the UK!

You could replace the glass doors for mesh though, just a thought, crafting a door that swings open in the middle like a thickets cage.

[misscatafer]

Welcome looking forward to seeing your cage build, hope you are enjoying your new additions! Please can you post a photo of the plastic saucer when it arrives, as I have never seen one big enough for degus before, so am quite intrigued! We made our flying saucer out of a rotating cake display plate and wicker place mat, both from Ikea... Do you have Ikea in Romania?

[shomoca]

I tought of this. Buyng 2 metal shelves
150 x75 x 30
i.dedeman.ro/media/catalog/product/cache/dedeman/image/1280x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/1/0/1023584.jpg

and atrach them one next to the other. So i will have 4 shelves of 75 x 60. Just aplying the mesh around them will mean I will have a lot to clean. It will be messy. So I am thinking of puttin a wood 'wall' in the back and maybe to one side of the new cage. Considering ventilation, it is important and here it can get pretty hot sometimes.. so good point there.

I think Amazon ships here, or maybe it just depends on the vendor.. i will take a look. A vivarium is not quit I have in mind, but it is a good idea nonetheless :>

I will try to make the best with what I have. I will strat putting ideas on paper.



@ Posted from smartphone

[deguconvert]

The link you have provided is showing an error. Perhaps it is only me seeing that?

The shelves you are describing, are they 150 in length, or in height? If it is 150 height, then it is 75 in width and 30 in depth? So, you would place a shelving unit in front of another one, so that they make a combined depth of 60? Will you screw the frames together so that they don't part and potentially trap toes, legs, or tails?

[randomname]

Salut, bun venit la forum

Nice to meet you, lovely to have new members from new places. Whereabouts in Ro are you? I have friends in Targu Mures (which looks like a beautiful place that I'd love to visit)

Do many people keep degus in Romania? If they are not popular yet you might struggle to find stuff that works for them. Can you find their food easily? Do you know a vet who will be able to treat them if they get ill? Lots of our members struggle to find what they need in their countries so don't worry, we can help.

I know the amount of stuff to learn with degus is a bit overwhelming. You don't realise how different/difficult they are until you already got them. Every one of us has been through the same! It's nothing like having a rat or rabbit or other small animal. Then you find out that to the food they need is special, the cages they need are big & expensive, you have to be very careful what you put in their cage & the vet's have no idea what a degu even is.. & you don't know what to do. Don't worry, we've all been there & we can help.

The advice you've been given is right - degus need a lot of space & plastic base cages aren't safe. One of my degus ate his way out of a plastic carrier the other day, only took him 5 minutes & he had been in it many times without chewing - just one day he did! Lucky I was there & he didn't escape & get himself killed by chewing on a wire! I know the last thing you want is to spend more money & I know delivery is really, really expensive - I don't send my friends gifts at Christmas because the postage is more than the gift (I send money & they buy their own chocolates!) but we can help you work something out I'm sure.


I don't think you said how old Ina and Lala are? If they haven't hit puberty yet, you probably want to give them more space before they get all hormonal & start bickering. In a small area that bickering can turn nasty. I think most of us would advise having a spare cage/carrier just in case they ever do fall out seriously, I know I've needed ours a few times.


Anyway, sorry for the information overload - we just want to save you time, money & heartache if we can

Welcome to the forum, glad to have you here.