I need help with a degu problem. Recently I got 2 degus - a mom and a son. The mom was chewing and clawing at her cage constantly to a point where the dug holes in the entire bottom and had to be moved in a tank. Now the tank has water resistent joints which she constantly tries to get at. She us trying to escape, jumping, biting, etc. They gave plenty of toys to play with but I have removed anything she can climb on temporarily because she can chew through the top. The tank is also very big so she has a lot of space. I have a suspicion that she may be stressing the son because he is climbing on top of the water bottle and just sitting there, chattering with his teeth (which I read is a sign of stress). Can anyone give me any tips? Is the mom stressing out the baby and should they be separated?

I’m looking for any sort of support here, please. I took my degus out of the cage to clean it as I’ve done so many times before, but my 3 month old girl got underfoot and before I could react my foot landed on her. I am extremely traumatized and will never forgive myself for this and I could really use some support. Thanks

Hey, I'm new to reddit in general, but today my 2 degus both 1y old were play fighting. When I went to checkup on them I saw one was limping. He was bleeding around his front right paw. It looked like some of his skin was torn off. I'm worried that one of his toes or his whole foot was damaged. Anyone have tips? He's eating fine and drinking water too. Should I bring him to the vet or watch and see how he does?

We build a playpen for your degus from cartoon boxes, it's pretty big but they absolutely hate it. They have toys, hideouts and hidden treats in smaller cartoon boxes. They spend most of their time trying to escape or jumping at the walls. I hate how unhappy it makes them but they can't stay in their cage all the time.

We used to let them free roam around the room but they - as expected - destroy everything. After we degu-proofed all our cables and so on, they moved on bitting walls. They also hide in our couch (that made them very happy) unfortunatelly we cannot make them do that since they mark everything with pee, not just from the outside which I can clean but from the inside as well. We have 4 degus, that's a lot of pee.

In what conditions do you let your degu free roam? What do they do when they are outside?

Am I allowed to add photos to see if you guys can help me sex my one degus? We just got them so they're not very handheld friendly yet. But I got a photo of one laying on suppossed to be his back but it wasn't that great of a look to tell the difference in my unexperienced eyes on if Loki is male or female. We we're told that they were Father and son but with how they were taken care of and who it came from. It seems like they may have just thrown out random information to get somebody to take them

Hi everybody,

I'm new here and looking for help on a serious issue I'm having with my degus.

Backstory: I had a friend who was maintaining a colony of about 15 degus. Sadly he passed away unexpectedly. And me being an animal lover, I took them on. I have the room and I inherited his housing for them, which is spectacular. They're split into groups of 5 though to prevent crowding/fighting. I've got plenty of experience working with animals (20+) as I've cared for many different species over the years. Rodents (mice, hamsters, gerbils, rats,) cats/dogs, amphibians, reptiles, birds, marine life. You name it. I've worked at rescues and a vets office and have always grown up with animals. I am familiar with degus (suprisingly a lot of people have never heard of them) because I had some in the past and I loved them!! I never had this issue though. My degus were always healthy and in good shape but then again I only had 3.

Now here's where I need help. Somehow some of them contracted a protozoal infection and began having diarrhea. They may have had it before they were given to me. I haven't seen any clinical signs such as weight loss, lack of appetite, dehydration, lethargy, etc. I've been weighing them daily and their weight isn't fluctuating. Their behavior is normal. They typically have it for a day or two and then it clears up. Sometimes it won't show up again for a month and then sometimes it will come back within a few days. It began to spread so I separated the ones with diarrhea for a little while to try and prevent spreading. Their diet hasn't changed. I have them on a scientific diet that is made for degus. Rodent Diet 5001. It's been long enough for them to acclimate to a new environment so I don't think it's stress.

I decided to take two to the vet and get their feces tested. They came back positive for "Tritrichomonas muris" and "Chilomastix spp." The vet said that there isn't much that can be done seeing as protozoal infections can be difficult to treat, especially with a colony. And even after treatment it isn't guaranteed that the infection will completely clear from the body. We talked about treating it with oral metronidazole but it is a very bitter/metallic tasting medication that degus do not like. Typically when rodents do not drink their medicated water, a little bit of sugar (very small amount of apple juice or dextrose) can help. But since degus are so prone to diabetes and the medication is not tolerable without sugar, I'm sort of at a loss here.

So basically, I know what the degus have but the vet said as long as they're not showing clinical signs or have blood in their stool that there isn't much that can be done.

Even though my degus are happy (spoiled really!) and still acting normal, I hate the fact that this is happening to them.

So...does anybody have any idea at all what I can do for them besides providing timothy hay (daily access) for them for extra fiber and making sure they are drinking water? Which they are.

Any help at all would be appreciated. I want to get rid of this because I don't want my babies to live with this. :( It is also very stressful on me seeing as I need to change their cages and disinfect everything (I use a diluted mixture of 15 parts purified water to 1 part bleach and rinsed well with hot water) every time this happens. It also costs a lot to keep buying bedding. But I'll do whatever it takes to help my goos!

Thank you all so so much! :)

Today I've noticed my degu has some weird brown/beige discharge from her mouth, she is not very active but when i want to check on her she's running away (usually she is happy to interact). She's eating but not so eager as usual and she's sleeping most of the day.

Have you ever had anything like this happening to your degus?

We go to the vet's tomorrow morning but I want to hear some opinions because I'm really worried. Thanks in advance

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Help! I can't find too much on degus care and want to be sure I'm doing to best for them! Along with any additional advice that you care to give me, I would like to know

What's specific kind of vegetables are they able to eat? I know no fruits because they have too much sugar but a lot of places are saying red peppers don't that have a lot of sugar?

I have some wood chips that are rabbit safe. I can't exactly remember what kind of wood they are at the moment, but I do remember confirming that they are rabbit safe. Would they work for the bottom tray of the cage for the degus?

What type of toys do they like the most? We're looking at chinchilla videos right now to see what they like and hopefully it translates over, but we would love to know what yours likes the most

Is there any wood that I should stay away from?

And any other advice you care to give me!

Hi everyone, I'm just gonna say everything about my degu who has been sick since end of November, hoping it can help someone or if someone knows anything helpful.

I came back from vacation and my degu was drooling. My vet anesthesied my degu to check her teeth, no issue, but her insides were bleeding and swollen. So she treated her mouth and gave me painkillers and antibio to help her. Barely two days after the end of treatment, she was drooling again. So we kept the treatment going.

It continued so we changed treatment. Due to it being new year, I ended up paying a pet sitter to feed her medicine since I couldn't bring her with me. When I returned I noticed she lost weight so I immediately took her to the vet, she lost 25% of her weight and her mouth was filled with blisters again. Turns out, the antibio change wasn't a good idea as it didn't help the infection. Hence why she ended up just not feeding herself.

Anyway, we tried other antibio, since I didn't have any vacation planned, I was very attentive and my degu gained her weight back on. I would call the vet anytime I saw anything weird. After a while, the vet was just dumbfounded and offered to do a bacterial test and a biopsy. Honestly, I even splurged to pay for the courier but the lab took two weeks to get the results... While I struggled and worried. It kinda pissed me off because even the vet didn't expect this to take this long since I ran out of medicine TWICE.

Anyway, the results were she got a staphylococcus, no cancer cell were detected and we needed to keep her on antibiotics for a looooong time.

Recently, her mouth swelled again. Now, we're on a New antibio. I kinda pressed for a X-ray to check her teeth roots and they're all good and no tumor in her mouth/cranium. The vet kinda suggested I take my degu to the capital in a bigger clinic...

For now, we're doing a lip cream, antibiotics and I splurged for a laser treatment on her mouth, hoping it'd get the superficial staphylococcus and the medicine would deal with the deeper bacteria.

I'm still hoping it can end this, but I'm also considering the whole go to the capital for this...

Anyone has something similar happening ?

I made IG profile for my sweetest octodon baby girls. Can you visit it please? https://www.instagram.com/chilean.rodents?igsh=ZTJnMTFxZGtuMXJz

So ive got two degus probably about 4 months old but one of them has been with me for 1 month and the other one for a week (previous one died bc of stomach complications :(..) so my boy (the one i got first) wont stop squeaking. Which is pretty unusual. My girl is pretty nervy and does that sometimes but thats cuz shes still a bit self conscious around me. Im working my way up for a healthy and trusting relationship with her. Now my boy has a bit more trust in me, will take treats, come up to me when i get in the room, climb my hand etc. So the squeaking wasnt fear of me (hed squeak even with me out of the room) but its like a non stop squeaking. I gave him the bathtub and he would go in and take his bath while squeaking at the same time. Idk what it is honestly.

We have an 11 year old degu. We inherited her 2 years ago (she was my daughter's class pet) and she is not used to being held. Her sister/cagemate died about 10 months ago. About six months ago we had her nails trimmed (by Pocket Pet organization volunteers) and she did not eat after that for several days -- I am assuming because of the stress of being held for so long. It appears that her teeth have overgrown. She is not eating her hay and she only eats her pellets if they have been softened. She is fairly skinny, but has a good appetite for the softened pellets -- she eats four small bowls of it each day. I have scheduled an appointment with the vet where they will do an examination one day and, if necessary, schedule another appointment to file down her teeth while under sedation. I am very worried that this will be extremely stressful for her. Has anyone experienced something similar with their older degu? Any advice?

https://preview.redd.it/6nstd9boj5wc1.jpg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9ccdea91cea70a17bdc36c7d17165694cec707c0

We recently received 3 pregnant females. 2 of them gave birth in the past few days. When the first one was giving birth we moved her to a different cage. I'm realizing now that this was a mistake. The 2nd one to give birth did so in the cage with the other and they were doing great together with the babies. We put the first mom and babies back in with them. The 2 new moms went to war. The 1st mom ended up getting bitten to the point of bleeding in a couple places so I separated them again. What can I do for them?