Broken/missing teeth

[Morgan]

Hi guys! Yes, I'm new. First post!

I have two degu boys, Pinesol and Cheater; brothers, had them for about a year and a half now.

This morning I noticed Cheater was acting funny.... I tried giving him one of his favorite treats, a sunflower seed, but he wouldn't automaticly take it from me... it looked like he really wanted to, but he was unable to. So, I held it up higher so I could clearly see his teeth.. turns out he only had one top incisor!

I immediately called a vet and they squeezed me in-between appointments. Problem is, there's no vets in my town that know the first thing about what a degu is, but this vet dealt with chinchillas commonly, so I figured she was good enough. -shrug-

When we got to the vet and took him out and looked in his mouth, he has some how lost is SECOND top incisor!
The vet didn't help much with explaining what would cause his teeth to just break/fall out! She just said I'd have to feed him by hand daily with a syringe to keep his gut going and keep looking at his teeth to see if they grow back. She said if they don't grow back it could be a tumor or it could have just broken so deep that it wont go back, but it shouldn't affect his eating. She said if it turns out they wont grow back, for the rest of his life I'll have to manually file his bottom teeth down myself.


This still didn't help explain what caused the issue to happen in the first place. I think maybe they just broke because they were misaligned? I took a pic of what's left of his teeth, which I've attached. You can sort of see nubs on the top where his teeth should be, but to me his bottom teeth look awfully long and like there's a gap. Are his teeth maybe misaligned and that's what caused a fracture?

I just want to see if there's anyone here who's dealt with an issue like this before and can explain to me what's going on with him. Like I said, the vet didn't do squat but hand me some syringes and give him some pain meds then take my money.

Thanks everyone!

[Morgan]

He seems to be doing much better today. Naturally, he's lost some trust for me and is fairly shy and skittish. I hand-fed him mushed-up and watered-down formula via syringe yesterday night, but today he's eating it on his own fine.

This morning I crushed up some shredded miniwheats and he licked those up and chewed them fine, and then about noon-time I noticed him licking crumbs and powdered degu-formula off the floor of the food-level of their cage. I gave him some crushed and shredded timothy hay, and he seems to have taken that well.

A second ago I gave him a mixture of degu formula-mush mixed with shredded timothy hay. He's eating that very well. Thankfully he's eating well, and his gums look much better. He's definitely not as sensitive and in pain like he was yesterday, whether that be because of the pain meds he was given or because he's healing. I'm happy either way.

I have faith his teeth will grow back. I can see little orange nubs of what's left of his teeth. Still, I'm left wondering what caused this in the first place, and how can I avoid this happening again...

[deguconvert]

Sometimes they just bite something the wrong way and off comes the tooth. I have had that happen where one of the top teeth broke, then then just as it was coming in well enough to contribute to eating, the other busted off. Thankfully they were pretty close to the same length eventually, and they grow back in very quickly. If my hair would just grow as fast as my degus teeth . . . but no such . . . luck? LOL! ANYWAY! I'm sure he will be just as chipper and healthy as always and soon sporting two new orange teeth to shine at you.