Cage upgrade for the new rescues

[cobweb2000]

This is my very first time setting up a cage for degus so critiques are welcome.


I posted a brief introduction of this group yesterday. There are 2 adult females and three babies (1 female, 2 males if my first attempt at sexing is correct). They came into our rat rescue in a cage that was a bit too small for them so I shuffled some of my rats around and setup a larger cage for the degus.

The old cage which was 16 x 22 x 32 (inches, not cm)


I moved them into a Martin's 695 which is 18x30x36.


I covered the wire middle floor


The pipe seemed to be a big hit


Not sure what to make of the rats in the next cage


Random exploring pictures.




Had enough of the camera


I still need to rig up a hay rack of some sort, but hopefully they'll be happy in this cage for the foreseeabe future.

[amie]

It looks great!

[deguconvert]

I think you've done well, especially on such short notice!! As the pups grow, you will find that the cage is still small for 5 degus, but I anticipate that you will be wanting to separate the genders before very long anyway. The pups are a week old? As they approach 6-8 weeks, you will want to have the female pups separate from their Dad, and possibly just living with Mum, while the males are all together.

Do you plan to keep them until they are re-homed, or is there the potential that you will want these little loves for yourselves?

[cobweb2000]

Dad is not with them. The two adult females came from two different sources originally.

I will likely keep the two adults; they've been moved around enough already and possibly any of the females babies. The males will be adopted out through our rescue. They aren't very common in our area and I don't anticipate any difficulty in finding a qualified adopter for them.

I was aware they needed to be separated around 6 weeks and I'll expand the cage as needed. The nice thing about Martin's cages is you can attach multiple ones together fairly easily.

These little guys are much harder to sex than a comparably aged rat. I may need to post some genital pictures to make sure my guesses are correct.

[Maravilla]

Just a small suggestion if you haven't done it yet: cover all the wired parts with wood, tiles or cardboard, even the ramps. It doesn't feel well on the little feet.
And keep an eye on the tail. Infections are rare but can happen.