New introductions....

[melmel1987]

ok so me and my boyfriend went to pets at home in wakefield this evening to get our goo's a wheel and a ball....

we came home with two new little boys ;D ;D ;D

so we now have Houdini, Axel & our new 'uns Punk and Rocket.

I have posted some photos up of the little blighters in the pic forum.

We currently have them seperated but the cages are next to eachother.

They have all had a sniff and a warble at eachother so me and my boyfriend thought we'd give them a formal introduction.

We have done it in the new goo's cage (which used to be our first goo's)

Rocket spent the whole of his time running in the wheel and punk, axel and houdini had a run about.

Now Axel (who previously met Rocket whilst we were cleaning and doing the new cage) was fine and didnt seem fazed at all. and punk and houdini were fine

then punk officially realised houdini was a newbie to him.....punk was tryin to hump him and kept nipping at his tail and sniffing his "rude bits"...Houdini snapped back at Punk and they had a bit of a wrestle with eachother (dominace standing on back legs, paws on eachothers shoulders) then they stopped....punk kept persuing Houdinin and, to me and my boyfriend, it seemed like little punk was tryin to dominate Houdini (who is larger and older, by 3 weeks or so) and again Houdini snapped and they had a roll around on the cage floor and alot of high pitched squeeking.

So we decided to seperate them and put them back into their cage...now Axel and Houdini are going a bit crazy about the cage and keep climbing up to where the other cage is to look at the others.

It seems more like Axel kind of misses them already...

Anyway obviously we're not going to put them all together in the main cage tonight (i dont want to find dead goo's in the morning) but obviously some of you on this forum have done various amounts of introductions.

Im going to put them into a neutral zone when we next introduce them, but im just worried that little punk is going to try and dominate them all and get his come uppance and then we wont be able to group them all together...

so any pointers and tips and common mishaps that occur in introductions would be greatly appreciated ;D ;D

[kerry]

hi, the pics are cool. when we introduced our rescue goo, we first put them together in the bath with a sandbath so they could all smell the same. we did this twice and there wasn't much squabbling -except when they wanted to clean his poor ears.

we gave the big cage a very very thorough scrub and popped them all in, again in a sand bath. this worked for us.

they would all be happy now if Danny had not turned out to be a Danielle. oh err!!!!

some people sy add a small amount of talk or vanilla essence in the bath to mahe them all smell like each other.

good luck!!!

kerry x

[kerry]

hi, the pics are cool. when we introduced our rescue goo, we first put them together in the bath with a sandbath so they could all smell the same. we did this twice and there wasn't much squabbling -except when they wanted to clean his poor ears.

we gave the big cage a very very thorough scrub and popped them all in, again in a sand bath. this worked for us.

they would all be happy now if Danny had not turned out to be a Danielle. oh err!!!!

some people sy add a small amount of talk or vanilla essence in the bath to mahe them all smell like each other.

good luck!!!

kerry x

[Lala]

Nice of you too rescue more goos from PAH Everytime my boyfriend and I go I always eye up the new goos... but as my boyfriend keeps pointing out space won't allow us to have new ones

Hope the next introduction goes well!

[melmel1987]

Yeh my boyfriend has said we cant go to PAH for a while now.

They only have one tank left with Degus in them now anyway, the other one has been taken up by 6 dumbo rats.

We saw Punk and Rocket in there about 2 weeks ago, and punk has a really wirey nearly furless tail. and they were proper cute but seemed a bit quiet, anyway we went back there last night and had a look at them and they came straight up to the glass and were proper scratching against the glass to get out and warbling at us, sooooo i was like "babe look at them there so cute and they just wanna come home with us"..."go on then" was his response =]]]]

i love how all the little kids were like " ohh mummy can we have them" then i barged past and said to the goo's "your going to come home with us babies and meet our other Goo's"

the little kids faces sunk. HAHAHAHA..ooh i am so mean!

Punk and Rocket came out straight away, they just climbed onto the girls hands (the brown haired one who knows the most about them there and handles them all the time). and...yet again...found their way out of the inside box on the way home, not that i minded, i had them on my lap and they were nibbling at my nose through the circle gaps =]


They were active as soon as they got into their home and immediately loved the fact that they could climb and grip upside down on the bars.

going to try another introduction in a few days in the bath with a big sandbath and a few drops of vanilla essence in their (Oand a towel to the read for Houdini and punk)!!



also if anyone does go to the pets at home in wakefield...check out the house rabbit...what a monster, its like over 2ft tall on its back legs! and proper gorgeous...if me and my boyfriend win the lottery we are going to buy a house with a room made just for it!

also the chins in there are gorgeous, there is a white/grey one with just one black spot on her back...fell in love with her!!

[Lala]

"also the chins in there are gorgeous, there is a white/grey one with just one black spot on her back...fell in love with her!!"

ahahaha, not a chance she's mine as soon as pay day comes I've been eyeing her up for agesssss
And yes that rabbit is massive! It's like nearly the size of my dog and she's a german shephard lmao.

oOoOo sounds like you got the goos I wanted but wasn't allowed cos of the "space issue" lucky miss!

Goos are like super masters of the escape artists! S'why I bought a cat carrier too take my babies too the vets can't chew their way out of that!!!
We did exactly the same kids were like "can we have them mam" I said "no sorry they're mine" mahaaaa.

[melmel1987]

the chin is a beauty but we've got our hands full with the goo's now and my boyfriend isnt too keen on chins.

yeh those goo's have been in there for ages, they are the pair that went into the tank after we got our first two, kinda of have like furless tails, they look like the fur has all been chewed away, on one of them particulary and Rocket is missing the tip of his tail (hmm this has appeared with BOTH pairs from there...)

[melmel1987]

So on Saturday me and my boyfriend tried thenext introduction.

We placed them in the sink (larger and deeper than your average sink) and put a bowl filled with chin dust and vanilla essence.

in go the Degus. All going well, rolling around in the sand, chirping away.

Then Axel (the dominant of him and Houdini) met Rocket (the dominant of Him and Punk) and they started mounting and gently nipping Rockets tail. alot of squaking ensued and high pitched whistling.

then came the tustle, rolling about int he sink fighting with eachother, so in came mummy mel with the towel to split them up. I held axel for a bit whilst the other 3 wondered around the sink, rolling in the sand and generally not minding being with eachother. Axel is a little bit wound up by this point sitting in my hands, little heart racing.

We put Axel back in, and again everything is fine for about 5 minutes, then the bickering starts again. Promplty they start to "scent" on eachother and again they try to mount and do there little dominance part.

Punk is fine this time as obviouisly being the submissive one to Rocket, doesnt seem to mind Axel showing dominance over him and the same goes for Houdini.

It is just Axel and Rocket. I want them to get on so badly, its obvious that Axel should be the dominant one as he is older, larger and stronger than Rocket.

Yet gain they fought and i had to split them up, Rocket came out of it all with a bite on the end onf his nose (he is fine though).

Me and my boyfriend don't know what to do, they squak at eachother through the cages all day and i dont want to risk tryin them in the bigger cage for fear of a death.

We have been swappin them about in eachothers cages, but when we did that Axel and Houdini our older pair became withdrawn and unfriendly.

Me and my boyfriend don't know what to do. He thinks that if they dont continue to get on then we should get rid of Rocket and just keep Axel, Houdini and Punk but i dont really want to have to do that for fear of Punk becoming depressed for losing his buddy (poss brother) and also becuase Rocket mightn ot ever get on with others.

Its just a pain having the two cages and the fact that we can't get them all out together.

Advise would be helpful. I know introductions take time but they way they fight it just seems like its never going to happen.

[redcassette]

Hey there i am new to the degu world! i bought two for my girlfiend three months ago from PAH. Unfortunatley one of them 'Tabbi' came to us ill, but rather then 'exchange' her we took on the responsibiilty ourselves and took her to the vets. Basically she never really got better, she had a repiratory infection which, despite the use of Baytrill spread thru her eyes and lungs. Yesterday we had to have her put to sleep. Things is we now only have one, 'Bella'. I want to get more but we were told its not good to mix litters. But it seems there is evidence on this forum that suggests otherwise.

Any info or help would be awesome!

[buzz]

you may just have to resign to the fact that neither dominant males will allow themselves to be dominated.It's much harder to introduce males than females. The best thing to do with introductions would be to get young degus that haven't established a pecking order. How old are these goo's that you bought?

Then again it's only been a couple of days and rocket may realise axel is stronger... you should let them have a good tussel as if they don't finish a fight then one can't assert his dominance over the other. However, if they start to get aggressive and start biting bums spray with water and seperate.

Please don't seperate punk and rocket. you are right, it you could affect punk as much as it would rocket as they are bonded and rocket shouldn't have to loose his brother just because he's a dominant goo. (Sorry, I hate seperating bonded families, my boys were a group of 5 and I really regret even 9 months later not taking all 5, but my boyfriend wouldn't let me as at the time we didn't have a large enough cage)

[deguconvert]

I don't know if this will be any help to you or not. We are still in the process of discovering how these degu relationships work. When one of our first two degu's died about four weeks after we first purchased them, we bought two new ones that very same day. They are about two months younger than the surviving original, and are very bonded with each other. After a week of living in the same cage, but separated by a barrier, we got them all together, and everything went really well for the next two months. Then . . . KABAM!! major fighting, blood drawing, one degu (PEEK) beginning to look rough and skinny. Over the course of three weeks it became clear they had to be separated. Now they are separated, bonded brothers in one, and older degu in the other, side by side cages.

It has been our habit to let them all out to run on the floor in my daughters room, for about an hour in the evening. Once they were separated though, that practice kind of went through a change. Now we will bring out the older degu (Reep) and one or the other of the younger ones, but seldom all three at the same time. On the floor, there is some boxing and crazy racing/chasing around the room, but seldom does it get scary. All three even do reasonably well when we have them all out. Only when we try to put them all back into one cage do we have martial arts blood bath fighting again. There doesn't seem to be any clear way to resolve the dominance dispute once they are all behind the same set of bars, but a larger open space like the room seems to work better.

On a puzzling note . . . the bonded brothers seem to be developing issues, and have begun to box and squeal with each other. Peek seems to be the contentious one of the two, being the one involved in fights with Reep, and is now pestering his brother, Snug, rather often. I hope they can settle their trouble because I don't have room for a third cage. What if they ALL think they have to be top boss???

[buzz]

A larger open space would work better because they can run away, in a cage they are forced to fight. Is Peek dominant between him and Snug. Splinter my dominant always pesters the other two by mounting... lots of boxing fights break out but if they don't get nasty I can't do anything as they need to settle the dispute. Buzz as he's the most vocal and likes to let everyone know, but I know that his excessive squealing is just him throwing a hissy fit so I don't worry. I provide places where they can escape to and defend the entrance if they feel threatened by anyone. It could be normal domiant behaviour that your witnessing as they get older, I know that more fights break out now than they ever did when they were younger.

I have also found that the larger the cage, the less fights that break out as like I said they can run away.