Green food troughs

[nika]

I’m wanting to install troughs in the new cages full of fresh growing greens. I have natural pine troughs, I’m going to get soil from the local woods to avoid any fertilisers and pesticides in commercial soil blends (the soil in the forest is much MUCH better anyways). I’m going to use wire to attach the troughs to the sides of the cages. I’m hoping to encourage the degus into eating more fresh greens.

I have recently purchased and received the degu seed mix (with chia) from ratrations. I was curious if anyone knew if these seeds will grow? And I’m assuming that since all these seeds are suitable for degus, that their greens will be also.

Mainly I’m wanting to pass my idea by people who know more than me. Does all this sound okay? Is there anything I’m missing?

[moletteuk]

I don't know of anyone who has totally got this sort of thing to work. It depends on the situation of the cage how well plants will grow and it depends on the degus whether they will eat the plant to death or dig out the soil or completely ignore it, or nibble it nicely. It's definitely a fun project though.

The pine trough should be fine if the wood is untreated or they can't access the wood to chew it. Soil from the woods will have bugs in it, I'm not sure how much of an issue that might be, possibly not really an issue. I don't know of anyone growing the degu seed mix, it don't see why you couldn't try it. Shelled warriors sell various seeds for growing plants to feed pets www.shelledwarriors.co.uk/site/Shop.html I've tried those with mixed success, I had the same problem as any mixed seed packet in that 2 or 3 species germinate at the expense of everything else. The other issue is 6 weeks of growth can be gone in a 1 minute degu snack.

You could eliminate some of the problems by having a series of things growing that you can rotate in the trough in the degu cage. So, 6 pots and only 1 in the degu cage at any one time so they get a chance to grow and recover. You could try different things, so grass in one pot, kitchen herbs in another, flowers in another, meadow plants etc. It would also eliminate some issues if you could protect the soil from digging and eating, but that may or may not be an issue.

[savvy]

I can't say much about the fresh greens as it's not my area of expertise, but I can confirm that the seeds DO grow! I regularly throw waste/extra/old bits of foodstuffs from their cages, bottom of bags etc into my garden for the local birds. The ones they miss germinate. The note of caution I would offer is that some of the things grown from these seeds are over 3 ft tall!

[nika]

I have 3 propagation trays that when split will each full 5 troughs. So the plan was to germinate one tray, then a week later, start another and then so on.

I don’t much mind if they tear them apart, they don’t eat any fresh greens and I’m hoping something like this will mix food with play and maybe make it more appealing?

[nika]

Sept 6, 2019 9:28:12 GMT savvy said:

I can't say much about the fresh greens as it's not my area of expertise, but I can confirm that the seeds DO grow! I regularly throw waste/extra/old bits of foodstuffs from their cages, bottom of bags etc into my garden for the local birds. The ones they miss germinate. The note of caution I would offer is that some of the things grown from these seeds are over 3 ft tall!

3 feet tall!? 😳
Definitely put them in the troughs for degu distraction when they only have a few true leaves lol

[nika]

Oh, and the place where the cages are is situated in the path of direct sunlight during the afternoon, including where I’m planning on installing the troughs.

Meh, I’ll give it a shot, if nothing else a bit of greenery in the cage will look nice for the few minutes it survives lol.

I think forest soil bugs are probably a much better alternative to fertislisers that are in many commercial soils. And it’s an *old* forest, so it’s layers and layers of that beautiful well rotted black soil made from decades of leaf mulch. I’m actually pretty pathetically excited about using it 😂

[moletteuk]

That's cool. Sorry I sound like I am pouring cold water on your plans. Give it a shot, it's a great project.

More slightly cold water in that the closer the plants are to maturity the better they are nutritionally for the degus. Sprouts and young things are sweeter and have more phosphorus, the fibre content and calcium take time to develop.

[nika]

Sept 6, 2019 9:48:08 GMT moletteuk said:

That's cool. Sorry I sound like I am pouring cold water on your plans. Give it a shot, it's a great project.

More slightly cold water in that the closer the plants are to maturity the better they are nutritionally for the degus. Sprouts and young things are sweeter and have more phosphorus, the fibre content and calcium take time to develop.

Thank you, that’s good to know I’ll try to get the best of both worlds. And you’re not throwing cold water on anything, I wanted to know any pitfalls I might encounter or if I was going about anything incorrectly. What I’m hearing is that it doesn’t have a great chance of being a a pile of degus eating politely lol. Thankfully, I pretty much expected it to be at best, death of plants 😂 No ones said that anything I’m planning is dangerous, which is the one thing I was hoping I didn’t hear. So it’s a win lol. Sorry if I came across any other way. I’ll go get the dirt today and start propagating. Because of this thread, I’ve decided that I’ll limit how many of the large seeds go into the propagation trays so they don’t dominate. I’ll give it a go, whatever happens, even if they don’t eat the plants (which I do pray they eat some), I think they’ll have a blast and I’m really working hard on coming up with ideas of things to put in their cage to give them more quality of life. I’m also getting a Perspex ‘baby gate’ made for the bottom of my stairs so that they can have the whole run of the hall and stairs (they love going up and down the stairs).

In fact, if anyone has ANY ideas of bits I can make that degus find fulfilling, I would appreciate it. I went into this a bit blithely, but if nothing else, I learn from my mistakes. I’ve been collecting all sorts of big rocks and twisty branches, I’m killing my wallet buying things to build this stuff - but I’m having fun. Luckily the degus are doing okay in their current set up, so I have time to get the cage kitted out before I make the big move. The cages are built, my room actually looks better than it did before (both me and my 16 year old daughter were shocked with that), stuff for wheels are coming. Cut to size perspex in en route to stop the substrate and poo from being flung far and wide. I need a trip to b&q to get fittings. Only other thing is bunches of bowls and water bottles. I’ve figured how to attach the cages. The wheels came off the cages fine and they are butted up, but I’ll need to snip a large hole between the cages and somehow insert a metal collar I think. I really do hope that I can get the gang back together. I think I may have gone a bit do-lally with the effort lol - I know it may not work, but I don’t think I’ll be able to help myself if I get disappointed. Just, fingers crossed.

Sorry for the essay 🙈 I do tend to blather on online - funny enough if you met me IRL - I almost never open my mouth 😂

[savvy]

Do you mean fulfilling in terms of enrichment? If so, there's some great and really cheap things you can do. Stuff empty toilet roll tubes with hay, but put one treat in the middle of it, then fold the ends in so they have to work for the treat. This works with any small cardboard box or egg box as well. They will chew through and then proceed to rip the container to shreds.

Full toilet roll with give them hours of fun nest building by trailing it all over the cage. Trust me, it looks a mess, but they love it!

[nika]

Yes, I’m terms of enrichment, but more specifically permanent features I can add to the cage. I’ve been playing with the idea of a bridge that I could build - that sort of stuff

[winic1]

I keep finches, and in the bird world we want to be able to give the birds live plants to live in and nibble on, but their idea of the situation is generally more like "PLANTS!!! ATTACK!!!! CONFETTI!!!!"

So, people will attach the pot with plants in it to the outside of the cage, letting some of the greenery poke through the cage bars, some is up against it, that way the finches can eat some of the live greens, but not destroy the whole plant. Some birds will dig into the dirt, scratching it up and tossing it around, if they have access to the pot, so being outside but against the cage prevents that. Others will just have several pots and rotate them every couple of days as the plants get destroyed.

But another popular method, especially with things like growing grasses for them, is to cover the top of the pot with a wire grid or grate, maybe an inch or two or so higher than the soil. This way, the plants get to grow up through the wire, when they are tall enough the birds can nibble on them, but they can't destroy them to the ground, and they can't rip up the dirt and mess up the whole thing.

[winic1]

Rich forest soil IS wonderful stuff. I would be worried about what you might bring into the house, tho. Obviously you could see bugs and worms, and pick them out. However, there will also be smaller, tiny, nearly invisible bugs. There will be fungi and bacteria, that are great for forest soil, but maybe not so great to expose domesticated degus to. But I also agree that you have no idea what is in commercial soil, and even tho it may say "sterilized" I have opened brand new bags of it, that got damp somewhere along the way, that were positively fuzzy with fungus.

Sooo....if you look online for time and temperatures, you can sterilize the natural forest soil by simply doing a low-temp baking of it in your oven. Hot and long enough to kill the undesirables, but not so hot that it burns the wonderful organic matter. It's not quite the same as wild, living, fresh forest soil, but it's also not going to bring something into your house or degus that you won't want. A compromise to consider.

[nika]

Oh, I like the idea of putting them outside the cage... but I think I like the wire mesh idea more - that’s a great idea! And I’ll sterilise the soil, just to be sure. Thank you so much, I always know youse will have ideas for me