Hey! The general advice that I’ve seen suggests keeping degusin groups of two – seven. I’ve got six degus, but they’re in two separate groupsso the most I have out at any time is four.
I don’t have any experience with female degus so Icouldn’t really recommend which sex you should go with. My boys are veryfriendly, the little guys more so than the big guys. Whichever sex you decide to go with make sure thatyou know how to sex degus yourself before you get them, even if you’re gettingthem from someone who seems as though they should know how to sex degus. I thinkthere are a lot of people who just take a quick look and say ‘that’s a penis,this one’s a male’ when males and females all have cones which are easily mistakenfor a penis if you don’t know about this.If you’re adopting degus and they’ve been keeping males and females togetherthere is a possibility that the females could be pregnant. Degus are pregnantfor three months but only show in the last two weeks and they have litters of 2– 10 pups.
If you’re adopting six degus I would recommend gettingthem as an existing group; introducing degus can be tricky and moving to a newhome will already be stressful for them.
I’ve recently written a post on what makes a gooddegu cage and what degus should have in their cage.The first post has a link to how to calculate what size cage you need. Most cages you can buy will be wire cageslike those that I have, there are guides around on how to build your own cage,these are usually wooden often with a wire mesh for the front or top to provideventilation. It’s more likely to be a question of whether you want to buy a cage or build one yourself.
Ideally degus would have something to dig in as theylive in burrow in the wild. You’ll need to take account of the space that wouldbe taken up by a tank when deciding what size cage you need/where to placeshelves. My guys don’t have anything for digging at the moment; I’m in theprocess of trying to find a tank that would fit in to the space available. I did get a tank for them to dig in while they were out of the cage for their run, but they’ve always been more interested in running than digging, I imagine they would pay more attention to something in their cage.
You can see a post on handling degus here. When you first get them try to give them the same food they’ve been eating and introduce what you’re intending to feed them gradually over the course of a week.
One last thing to consider is that degus areclassed as exotic pets. Do you live near a vet that would treat degus? Thefirst vet I went to said they would see degus but very clearly didn’t know athing about them and usually only treated dogs and cats.
I could keep talking for pages, so I’ll leave it here. Please feel free to get in touch ifyou have any further questions or you want any more detail on anything 🙂
I’m not sure if people realise I have an faq page, I’ve tagged all of the posts with ‘faq’ so if you’re on mobile you can search my blog and get to the posts that way. I’m going to be reblogging the posts one a week to give me some time to create some time to create more content. Let me know if there are any topics you’d like to see!
I’ve seen the degus jump on the coconut house and use it as a place to hide food and things, but this is the first time I’ve seen one of them inside it
Sam decided he needed a bigger place
Tobias update: he is a cuddly boy
Tobias is doing better, after an increase in his antibiotics dose the blood in his urine cleared up. The blood in his eye is presumed to be uveitis, we’re in the second week of eye drops which Tobias is not impressed by and there’s been improvement!
Hey. I had the same concern as you after getting my first two degus and got another four (I was only going to get two or three, but they were rescues and living in such terrible conditions that I took as many as the cage I had prepared could hold without overcrowding). I’m not necessarily the best person to ask about socialising degus as I’ve yet to do it successfully, but I can share my experiences.
Thoughts on introductions
give the degus the time they need, don’t go too quickly when it looks like things are going well
make sure everyone is at an appropriate age for introducing, i.e not going through puberty which happens from 6 months – 1.5 years old
the individual degu’s personalities are important to take into consideration – if a degu immediately acts agitated around other degus it might not be possible to introduce them to others
use a neutral space for introductions
have something like a tea towel to hand to separate degus in case of a fight (where they lock together and roll around as they fight, commonly referred to as a ball), but not scrapping or mounting
familiarise yourself with signs of aggression/agitation
it’s better to end an introduction session too early than too late
give the new degus time to settle in to their new home before adding another stressor and quarantine them to make sure they don’t have anything contagious such as parasites
I’ve recently come across something referred to as the carrier method, this was in relation to rats, I haven’t looked in to it further yet to see if this is something I might want to try with degus
introductions can take a long time and all degus involved will need proper set ups during this time and in the case of introductions failing. ask yourself if you would be happy/able to care for two sets of degus
What I would have liked to do when one of my original two degus died is to find a degu at a local rescue and to take my boy there and see how they react to each other and decide whether it was likely they could get on, however no local rescues had any male degus at the time.
Today’s silly degu: Zach
Jumping up the wall wasn’t working so he jumped on to my shoulder and tried jumping up the wall from further up
He didn’t get much further and landed back on my shoulder
Silly Degu 