Male Degus figthing; blood in cage?

[panicdevil]

Hi guys
So I have two male degus who stay together. They have been together since they were very young and have done playfighting but never actually have been in a serious fight. Today, I checked on them and they were fighting. One of them has a bloody nose. It's not too bad of an injury but there's little patches of blood in the cage, on the food dish etc.

I don't see what would cause the fight, they both have their own food dishes and they usually get along. Should I do anything to the injured degu? Should they be separated until the injured degu's nose heals?

I'm also noticing that the injured degu appears to repeatedly try to groom the non-injured degu, and the non-injured one is a bit irritated at this. Don't know if that has any significance, though.

[deguconvert]

What are their ages at this point? Is there the possibility that they are in the adolescent age, between 6 - 18 months old? This time can be rife with fighting for no other reason than that they can and will in their efforts to be top degu.

[ourdegu]

Sorry to hijack the post, however i am having exactly the same problem with our Cheese and Pickle. We bought them december last year when they were babies. In the beginning they went through a phase of squabling and we put that down to one of them trying to assert his dominance and it seemed to work as they stopped squabbling and all was good. However, recently they seem to have started again and it is worse than ever with them quite often chasing each other round the cage and really screaming at each other. As a result of one of these squabbles tonight one of them had blood on his foot and wouldn't put pressure on it. We took him to the vet and it was a ripped nail. Is it normal for them to fight like this?

[deguconvert]

Up to the age of 18 months, they can still be considered adolescent, and this is an age that can be very unsettled with periods of fighting. In light of that, yes, this is kind of normal. The fighting doesn't sound like it has become lethal. Very recently we have been talking about fighting among degus, and it is something we are considering, the "value" of fighting to ensure positions of dominance, when should fighting be broken up, do we tend to part degus too soon . . . etc. For now, I recommend that you keep an eye on them, and let them sort it out. Hopefully they will do this soon.

Just for clarity, can you tell me what the dimensions of your cage are? Cage size can be a strong influence on the stability of a degu colony.