Handling babies with less tame adults around

[Erica]

I'm looking for advice on how to handle my 2-week old babies who share a cage with their less than perfectly tame Mom and her three older daughters.

Mom and her 3 adult daughters will eat out of my hand and one of them will jump on but I wouldn't call them tame... yet. I want to handle the four 2-week old babies as much as possible before I give them away to friends but the babies either run away or get herded into the far corners of their cage. (The cage is 4x4 feet). The babies aren't responding to food bribery yet and I've recently tried to lure them with a dust bath jar but they're just not interested in that yet.

I welcome any suggestions.

- Ricky

[ra]

Sounds as though the size of your cage is making contact difficult. Good for the Degus but not so good if you want to catch one!!

Could you perhaps put up a temporary divider even just a piece of cardboard to make it more difficult for the babies to get back into an area where you can't interact with them. Another idea put a box of some kind like a shoe box with one opening cut in the side into their large cage. Degus are so curious. It would probably take some time but eventually some of the babies would wander in then remove the box with the babies to a safe room like your bathroom to handle and play with them. Herd them back into the box and let them go into the cage when you are finished. My girls seem to like to get out of their condo, even into a smaller carrying cage just because they are curious and like to have a change of scenery. Once the babies got used to the idea that the "box" was a transport to somewhere fun I think they will be easier to catch. A couple of challenges here, first the adults and second the amount of time it might take.

p.s. being the babies are only two weeks old you really don't want to start taking them away from their mother for any length of time just yet. Once they are weaned this might be a good plan.

[Erica]

Hi Ra,

Thank you so much! This evening I had 2 of the adult degus in the bathtub with me (one at a time and, obviously I hope, with no water in it).

I lured Spot into her dust bath jar to transport her to the bathroom. Once we were in the tub together she climbed on my legs, ran around and explored. Then she hid against my legs for awhile. Once I was ready to leave the tub she wouldn't go back in the jar though so I used a new small box that she couldn't resist. It was great!

Next time, I'm going to do this in the morning when the girls are hungry. I'll use their food to train them to stay on my legs or hands. If my "less than tame adults" were OK with this I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the babies climb into the jar and get to go to the bathtub too.

Thank you for the great suggestions!

- Ricky ;D

[kioshiandtomeo]

hahaha, yeah, cocenring your doing is taking them out for tamig in the morning because they'll be hungry. . .hahah, mine are always hungry! lol.

Good luck in taming the young 'uns!

-Rachel & The Zoo.