Help/advice needed - it's a bit complicated

[arlow]

Hello from Japan everyone,

I hope you all are having a nice day.
I am new to Degu keeping, and I am having a bit of a problem.

My daughter and I had wanted degus for a while and last year we finally decided to go ahead. We bought books and read online before we started. We prepared the cage (actually 2 cages connected through a big opening because no suitable cage was available).
Degus are very expensive in Japan (around the equivalent of ~90 USD for base color) and still rare.
First time we went to the pet shop, there was only one (female) so we bought her and brought her back. She is beautiful, initially she was very shy but as I work from home, I kept playing with her a lot everyday and we bonded very well.
3 months later we finally got a call from the store saying they had another female for sale. This time, pied, very beautiful but equivalent of ~120 USD (OUCH!!!). We didn't want our female to remain alone so we bought her.

But you can imagine from the title: after a few months, we discovered "her" was actually "him".
As soon as our female became apparently pregnant, we knew what had happened so when the pups were born (7 beautiful babies) we were ready.
We decided to keep 1 male and 1 female and give away the others; this way the female could have a companion and the male too, and we could keep the genders separate.

This is where things take a turn.
We did our best to try and sex the pups, but it felt incredibly difficult. The genitalia looked really pretty much identical on all the pups.
After checking and re-checking and re-re-re-re-checking, we selected two, and gave away the rest.

As time went by, I grew more and more certain both were males. The bigger they grew, the clearer it became.
Our female had actually managed to give birth to 7 male pups! What are the odds? That is why we found sexing so difficult...

So we had the OG male breed again with the female, then once we knew for sure she was pregnant, kept all 4 together and everything was fine.

Fast forward 3 months, the pups are born. This time, 4 females and 4 males, sexing was very easy and clear-cut.

Only problem: the OG male has become very aggressive towards the two other males from the first pregnancy.
He rushes to them and attacks as soon as he sees them. We hoped it would get better with time but it has been 4 weeks and it is unfortunately still the same.

So now we are in a bit of a bad spot. We can't keep all the degus (small Japanese apartment). We're not sure what to do. We want to keep the 2 OGs of course since we feel responsible for them.

The plan right now it to give away the two males from the first pregnancy to close friends of ours so that we can still see them often.

Then keep at least one female as a companion for the mother.

The question is: what to do with the dad? He is of course very chill with the male pups since they are still young, but if we keep one as a companion I'm afraid he will become aggressive as soon as the pup turns sexually mature.

Neutering is another solution but there is only one vet here who accepts to perform the operation, they honestly told us they have almost no experience with degus and that there are risks. Also, the operation is incredibly expensive (between ~400 and ~500 USD).

What would you do if you were in our place?
Thank you in advance for your help and advices!

[savvy]

Welcome to the forum and hello from the UK!

Well you have had quite an introduction to degus.

What I suspect is happening is related to dad trying to drive off the first litter for a couple of reasons;

1. This is territory related. He may feel that his position as alpha degu is being threatened so he's determined to maintain his status by trying to force the first litter to go off and find their own territories.

2. Your alpha degu now feels that there are too many males and not enough females in the pack, so he's trying to drive off the competition for what he sees as 'his ladies.' The younger males will be OK for a while as they are young but mixed groups where there is one female and multiple males does cause fighting as they all compete for breeding rights.

You can still keep two groups, one male group and one female group, each of which will contain your original degus, but you may need to position the cages where they males and females aren't too close distance wise. A female degu cycle is about 21 days, but as I'm discovering (I have a male and female living side by side) the close proximity of the male is affecting her cycle as her hormones are encouraging her to breed.

We do have members on the forum who have more experience with degu pups than me and I'm sure they'll be able to offer more in depth advice.

In the meantime, please feel free to ask any questions you need to and we'll try our best to help.

[arlow]

Hi,

Thank you very much for your reply.

The vets I talked to said the alpha male should be kept alone, but they admitted to having little experience with degus. Keeping a degu alone seems contradictory with everything I have read in books and online, so I think I'll put a pup male with him in his cage and then follow your advice and keep them in a separate room from the females.

But there is another problem. We have only three rooms in our apartment. One is my work room which is full of books and cables. Another room is the living room where I can setup a large and safe dedicated perimeter for degus to play. The last room is the bedroom which would be even better but has tatami mats. Tatami mats are made from dried rice straw, and apparently it is delicious to degus as herbivores (I have several holes already from early days of keeping, because no source mentioned it). It also stains almost immediately with degu pee.

I am concerned that whenever I let the male group or female group play out in the dedicated area, they will leave a scent and that scent might cause fighting between the males once the pup is sexually mature.

So maybe giving away the males would be the best solution?
The initial plan was to have only two females so, in a way, we would achieve that (after many adventures). We may actually keep two female pups so they would be 3.
But I feel so bad for the alpha male (his name is my nickname on this board, Arlow).

[savvy]

Degus really shouldn't be kept alone as they get very depressed.

It is possible for both groups to use the same play area, at different times of course, if the area is cleaned between visits so the smells are diminished. Plain water or water with a very small drop of white vinegar should be sufficient to do this. Alternatively keep separate floor coverings for the play area for each group so they only have their own scent. A thick plastic sheet can be used as it's cleanable and would protect your floors and mattings.

Another solution would be to allow the males into the play area first, then the females so that the scent of the females has has time to fade overnight by the time the males are using the play area again.

As you will already know, degus are great chewers and will chew everything regardless of the taste, so using something that's just theirs as a covering will help prevent damage.

[moletteuk]

Welcome to the forum Arlow

I'm going to point you towards our beginner's guide first because it sounds like you have consulted quite a few husbandry references and over the years we have reviewed all the information along with all the experience on the forum and put together our own advice. I'm thinking the cage size recommendations might be pertinent with you being stretched for space. deguworld.proboards.com/thread/19754/beginners-guide-degu-keeping

I would rehome the two remaining males from the first litter.

I wouldn't recommned neutering in this case, at least not at the moment becuase the hope is that once dad is removed from the females and some distance between them he should settle down with one or two of his sons. Dad may also be concerned about territory space with so many degus in the apartment now.

If at all possible I would recommend groups of 3 rather than 2, you get more social expression with 3 and you are less likely to have do an introduction.

How old are the younger pups? Who is living with who at the moment? I think you want to get the younger male pups living with dad and away from mum sooner rather than later to see how they settle, probably at around 5 to 6 weeks.

For the play area I would get a large rubber mat, you can sometimes find them sold as garage mats, or perhaps a piece of lino to line the floor of the play area and then wipe it down between groups.

Make sure mum is getting lots of good quality forage and seeds and plenty of calcium to get her strength back.

[deguconvert]

Welcome to the forum, Arlow! It is lovely to meet you, and I am so glad you have come to ask advice. Your English is VERY good!! (As you can see, I am assuming that Japanese is your native language. Is that correct?)

I would recommend waiting until 6 weeks of age to separate pups from Mom and have the younger male pups in with Arlow.

Also . . . do you have Arlow still living with your female? She could be pregnant again, as degus have peak fertility during the first 24-48 hours following the birth of a new litter, and as a result both male and female will actively seek to copulate if they are together.

I, too, am interested to know what your cage sizes are. What we recommend for cage sizing to all our members may be a big difficulty for you in the space that you have available. Would you be willing to pose pictures of your cage setup? To do that, you need to use a photo hosting site that will then let you create and use a link to post here. We do not have enough data to accommodate photos directly embedded on our site.

[bouncy]

Hello there! You weren't kidding when you said it was complicated! Actually, it's more common with pet stores than you think!

The main problem you're having right now is space. As Savvy said, they're very territorial, and all your alpha male can see right now is the space that used to be for the two of them is now the space for more than six! I'm afraid, if you want to keep more goos, you will need to give them more space. I understand the difficulties in finding an appropriate cage (or two given your growing pup problem). If you have the space, you will either need to join more cages, or consider making a home for them. First things first. Have a look at our cage size recommendations, and decide how big a cage you will need for the number you have. There are also ideas on there for cage building.

I would also give mum some help. She's had two back to back pregnancies, so will be in need of some extra calcium and oil seeds in her diet to help replenish what she put into the pups.

We're always happy to help, so don't be afraid to ask!

[arlow]

Hello,

Thank you all for your precious advice.
For now, I have bought removable protection for the tatami mats and use that room to let the degus play. It is very easy to clean up so hopefully I can get rid of the scent between males and females.
I also thought having male groups out before female groups would be better: this way even if females leave a scent during the mating season, males won't be able to smell it.

I have also found a new home for the two male degus from the first litter. The people who will take care of them are very good friends and neighbors so we will be able to see the degus regularly.
Hopefully once they are not here anymore, the alpha male will calm down.
The pups from the 2nd litter are almost 5 weeks old. They have nearly completely stopped drinking milk and their droppings are the same as adults, so they seem almost ready for new homes too. Although I will be very sad to see them go.

We can't decide which ones we will keep. They have become very curious and friendly over the past week, so it is very difficult. They climb on us and eat in our hands like the adults - sometimes they also eat OUR hands, lol (one even chewed away all the hardened skin on my feet when I fell asleep yesterday, I hope he won't get sick. We named him "piranha")

[savvy]

I think you need to keep Piranha.

[bouncy]

Definitely! Especially if he can chomp through your dead skin without you actually waking up! Another vote for Piranha!