💾 Archived View for thatit.be › 2024-10-25-17-27-20.gmi captured on 2024-12-17 at 10:03:57. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I’ve been in and out of the local pet shop a few times over the course of the last six months or so. Mostly related to family pets, bunnies, and rats. But the last few times, it was for me. I picked out a couple of degu pups. But they were a male and a female set of pups and this presented something of a problem. I would prefer to not end up with litter after litter of more degu pups. But they’re social creatures, so I can’t simply split the pair up and not let them interact.
Let’s back up a bit. I had some ferrets for about ten years, and I still have a few ferret cages. Including the Ferret Nation 182 double-story unit, with all the platforms and ramps. This cage is awesome, very spacious, at a great height to be able to clean and maintain, and it has a rack under it where I can store supplies and foods. The top is also high enough that when the cat gets on top of it, he can’t easily reach the little furry critters inside it.
This cat has a healthy respect for furry critters that are smaller than it is, thanks to his former ferret friends. But there’s a limit to this respect. If it’s the size of a mouse or smaller, it’s food. If it’s bigger than a rat, he exercises caution and stays back. Baby degu probably look like food. Once they reach maturity they may still be too small. As long as the degu are supervised outside, things should be okay.
The plural of degu is degus (are degus?) but it’s a word that sounds like it should work for both. Anyway, I bought the two degus from the pet shop, knowing they were male and female, but assuming I could get a few more and split them into a male and female group. For the most part, the male doesn’t spend a lot of time trying to hump the female and they get along well. I set up the Ferret Nation cage so that they had everything they needed on both levels, but could block it so that they’d be isolated overnight. Not great that they’d be forced to be separate, but that way they wouldn’t mate while I’m sleeping and can’t keep an eye on them.
Within a day I located another shop that had degus. I was relieved because my fallback plan was to go online and order them from Kentucky or somewhere and pay an exorbitant amount for shipping live animals. I picked up three more degus, but they were much smaller than my initial pair. Too small for the Ferret Nation cage, as they could simply walk between the bars. I also hope this means they’re too small to attempt to mate with their siblings.
I got out my smallest ferret cage, it’s a knock off of a much better, but still small cage. It wasn’t exactly a travel cage, but it worked to hold my ferrets while camping. Ferrets are only awake for at most four hours a day. None of mine would be awake for more than an hour straight at a time. While I wouldn’t have wanted to keep the ferrets cooped up in a tiny cage, I was willing to keep them in this tiny cage for about one weekend, once a year or so.
The tiny degus are too big to squeeze through the tiny bars of this cage, so it worked out. I put my three tiny degus in this tiny old cage, and cycled some entertainment for them over the course of the day. The exercise wheel spent most of the early morning with the two larger degus, then I swapped it in with the tiny degus around mid morning. Same for the bath house and a few other objects.
My dog occasionally tries to paw at the cage while he watches the tiny degus play. He makes cow sounds while he does this.
The cat has left the tiny cage alone because I have a squirt bottle and regularly remind him to keep walking. I bet they look delicious to him.
Over the first night of separating the two older degus I have discovered that there are some weaknesses in the Ferret Nation cage. At the corners, there are a couple of bars that are slightly further apart. I retrieved my larger female degu from the laundry room this morning and returned her to the cage. Later in the day I saw my larger male shove his head through the bars. I’ve mostly blocked those, but I wont know until tonight if it’s sufficient.
Apparently I have a mouse. So probably more than one, but I only put eyes on one. While I was retrieving my lady degu from the laundry room, the cat was cornering a very large and fat looking deer mouse in the kitchen. The mouse did escape from the cat, though I’m not sure how it got inside in the first place.
It will be at least a week before my three younger degus can go into the Ferret Nation cage. At that time, I’ll still separate the five degus each night and let them mingle during the day. Unless they can’t behave, in which case I’ll keep them separate longer. Unfortunately I can’t separate them now because I only have one cage that is small enough for the tiny degus. Ideally I’d put the males in one cage and the females in another. There’s little chance of the tiny degus reproducing right now, so that’s not so bad. The two larger degus are more of a risk. In fact, I wont know for a while if the large female ended up getting pregnant while still in the pet store.
I have yet to come up with a good naming scheme for the degus. I’m not even certain what the male to female count is for my three younger degus. Sexing ferrets was easy: if you can find their belly button, it’s a boy. With degus, you inspect the distance from butt to button. The females have a shorter average distance. But these pups are tiny, so I’m not entirely sure. It will be easier to tell as time goes on.
created: 2024-10-25
(re)generated: 2024-12-17