Hogging food?

[Furik]

I'm getting a new cage soon so i'll probably move him away from the others but right now i'm having a problem.

When I put food in the dish, there's one degu pup who refuses to let anyone eat. He hogs the food and when the others try to get food, he screams and yells at them. Eventually, if they provoke him enough, he starts to wrestle and push them around, making the others cry.

I've tried disciplining him by moving him out of the cage and into a pet ball while letting the others eat.

Could this really be a big problem? He attacks any of them, there's 3 pups and the mother.

I'm afraid of how aggressive he could become when I move him and the other male into the new cage.

[Sunshinemeg]

Sounds like he is hungry, have more food available, I am guessing the bowl gets empty and then you fill it? if so, fill it more often and the desire to hog it should decrease, also, it wouldnt hurt to have a second bowl on a different level to allow the others to reach food as well.
I had a similar problem with one of my boys and tackled it by adding a second bowl, and not letting the food level go down as much before re-filling.

good luck

[JoJo]

Thanks for the advice Sunshinemeg. I have 3 degus and one hogs the food all the time. I've got two bowls in the cage but I think I will need to top their food up more often.

[Erica]

I have a degu who was a food hog from a very young age too. She even pushed the adults away. In addition to adding another food dish or two you can also scatter some food on the floor of the cage. Degus love to forage and it's harder for one degu to hog all of the food.

[girlrazor]

Sometimes it's a dominance issue too. I find one of my degus, Luna does exactly the same, and she is most certainly the dominant one of the pair. However, Diego, the less dominant one does more comfort eating when she's not about and is thus the larger one of the two... What size is she? Is she chubby or skinny looking?

[Sunshinemeg]

The less dominant of a pair of degus will actively move slower in the cage to appear less confrontational to the dominant degu, they will also eat more. As they are not burning off this excess food, very often the larger of the degus is NOT the dominant one, an interesting point we discovered a few years ago with gromit and marmalade.