'fighting' about food.

[lindie]

How can you best deal with degu's 'fight' about food? I have a group of 3 degu brothers who are 6 weeks old and live together, who quarrel/'fight' about their food. Especially Elphias. Since he was born he has been very protective about his food, chases everybody away (he literally runs after them) from my hands and the bowls, squeaks very loudly etc..
But also the other two do this sometimes. I don't know where they get it from since my females (mum and aunt) have never ever done this, and always share peacefully. 

Since they are still so young I want to do something about it now, so that they don't grow up fighting about food and developing real food aggression. 
The current way I am feeding them is:
- hay, Is spread throughout the cage, they never fight about it.
- pellets, I put piles in cage in different spots everyday, they also never fight about this.
- seeds, I have two bowl which are +- 10 cm away from each other. They fight about this a lot, especially after I refilled them. Elphias (or a other goo) claims one bowl (or even  both of the bowls) and every degu who comes near gets yelled at/pushed away/ or even chased after.
- Forage, I have one big bowl on the same level as the seeds. They behave the same here as with the seeds.
- Treats, this one is the worst. I used to let them always pick out a couple of treats from my hand or a bowl, but don't do this any more since  

I hope someone has some tips.

[savvy]

This is quite a common problem, but hopefully easily fixed.

Try moving the seed bowls to different levels so they can't see each other eating from them, add a third bowl of seeds, separate the forage into three separate piles, again on different levels. As they are still very young, its a classic case of 'hey, whats he got that I haven't?'

If they each have a bowl of seeds and a pile of forage, if they are chased away from one, there will alway be one free for them to eat from.

[teemu]

Yeah, squabbling about food is rather common. It's one of those crystallization points of all dominance and hierarchy issues, and a constant source of annoyed shouting. Especially with young boys, you can expect to see a lot of arguing about it. As Savvy suggests, try to have one of everything available for each. It will probably take a bit of time before they realizet that they can use the other feeding stations as well (degus are cautious by nature and need to ascertain that it's safe, which takes some days), but it should ease things up after that. Most of the time the fighting is very much just because degus tend to be very passionate about foods they like, so they cannot bear the thought of someone else getting the good bits... even if the food in question is literally just uniform pellet. Or water.

[bouncy]

I can only echo the others, especially as you have an increase in numbers! This is compounded by pup appetites, which are often more than double that of the adults.

More bowls throughout the cage, and try to make sure there's always some food in them, so no-one feels like supplies could be a problem.

[lindie]

I have now created 2 feeding spots. On each spot, there are 3 bowls. The first spot has 2 bowls of forage, and one with seeds. And the second spot has 2 bowls with seeds and one with forage. I also switch to feeding treats by hand and not letting them pick out a treat. They still change each other away from the bowls though. Someone else's food is apparently always better.

Oh, and they eat so freaking much! I put a really big pile of pellets in the cage every day, and it just disappears. I feel like one baby eats 3 times as much as an adult! I'm going to need to order more pellets soon!

[savvy]

As long as food is always available it should calm things down a bit.

Yeah, it can come as a bit of a surprise how much they eat.

[teemu]

They like to stash them away as well, of course. So it's likely that not all of the pellets they're taking out of the bowls end un in their bellies. But growing boys do eat a lot too!

[bouncy]

It's true, Lindie! When pups, Sausage and Spud ate double that of Spidey, Silly, and Scaredy. When I took home Snoozy and Sneaky, they ate almost double that of Sausage and Spud! It won't slacken for a year yet.

[savvy]

So true! Reggie was 7 months when I brought her home, almost 3 years ago now, and I'm convinced she ate her body weight in food every single day! You do wonder where they put it all, lol.