Moving house - advice please!

[ryanj]

Hi guys - advice please!

So we currently have a nice big homemade cage for our beautiful 4 degu girls, optimal size for the 4 of them.

Unfortunately we're moving house soon, somewhere smaller where there just isn't the room for their big cage.

So my first question is, do degus require less space as they get older? Our girls are 5 years old.

Secondly, can anyone recommend any cages? Preferably tall with multiple levels as apposed to wide ones that take up space.

Thanks!

[moletteuk]

Hi Ryan, nice to see you

My girls did slow down as they got older but did still visit and enjoy all their territory and my longest lived degu didn't slow down until about 6.5 yrs old. You might need to consider the unsettling affect that downsizing may have on the stability of the group, didn't one of the sisters have an issue with Quinn, or was that degu rehomed, or was that Enya, I can't quite remember?

I think a modified Liberta Explorer/ Aventura/ Pet Planet cage could work if you fully extended the shelves and probably did a basement or roof extension. They are just under 1m wide, you couldn't really go narrower than that anyway.

[ryanj]

Jul 31, 2019 18:28:46 GMT moletteuk said:

Hi Ryan, nice to see you

My girls did slow down as they got older but did still visit and enjoy all their territory and my longest lived degu didn't slow down until about 6.5 yrs old. You might need to consider the unsettling affect that downsizing may have on the stability of the group, didn't one of the sisters have an issue with Quinn, or was that degu rehomed, or was that Enya, I can't quite remember?

I think a modified Liberta Explorer/ Aventura/ Pet Planet cage could work if you fully extended the shelves and probably did a basement or roof extension. They are just under 1m wide, you couldn't really go narrower than that anyway.

So a quick recap...
We bought 4 sisters - Prea, Prue, Bertha and Enya. A month later Prea gave birth to 2 boys (which we had re-homed) and a girl, Quinn. Enya didn't like Quinn so we separated them, keeping Quinn with Prea and Prue, and put Bertha with Enya so she wasn't alone.

After a while Enya and Bertha began fighting and sadly one day Enya died mid-battle with Bertha.

Bertha had been separated from the others for so long that she wouldn't go back with them. So we kept them separate. One day we decided to start re-introductions and now Bertha happily lives with Prea, Prue and Quinn again.

There has been peace and harmony now for about 2 years!

Thanks for the cage advice - Welly look into those. The last thing we want is to disturb the peace!

[moletteuk]

Thanks for the recap, it sounds like not unsettling them could be a factor. If you had somewhere to put them while you did the modifications, you might be able to reduce the length of your existing home build cage, which would probably keep the girls the happiest.