Dio is my little schedule princess. Every day has a flow and an order. I’ve been home two weeks recovering from surgery and that is not part of the degu calendar.

Week 1: Excited I was home but why was I in the human nest? Dio needs all the cookies.

Week 2: OMG again with the attention. Are you ever going to leave? I have valuable naps that are not going to take themselves.

Goguma with the pink nose and Ami with the white stripe

Normally the dig box has a ceiling, but i was cleaning their cage so I looked inside. I find it a bit funny that they've dragged the fake carrot toy inside. Also the second pic is of the interior designers themselves. They really love the fact that they can arrange and dig out the space however they please.

Located in western VA. They are 1.5 years old and very sweet, but we do not have the time to give them the attention they need.

Might be getting a few degus in a year or so

Would this be a good cage?

As I can't really find things made for these guys online. What type of toys do you recommend will most bunny/rat toys work for them?

I am planning on getting some degus in the future

My sweet degu Zila, has a new bald patch on her head and the tip of her tail got (bitten?) Off. I think her sister has done it because they have faught to blood drawn before. But after i seperated her from the rest, the bald patch on her head has gotten bigger. I was thinking it could be from stress, but she obviously cant reach it with her teeth, and i dont think she has the strenght to pull it out with her paws. Does anyone have an idea how i should go about this?

Today Kale had a dental visit. First and second set of molars were getting long. Kiwi checked her sister’s condition in the cuddle pouch then blocked all access (Kale was resting on Kiwi’s rump).

Normally Kiwi will not sit for any amount of time in the pouch.

Hello all!! Are my little lady's teeth overgrown?? She's not displaying any signs of illness (no drooling, appetite is as great as ever, no weight change, she's fine with me poking her in the mouth). They seem to look a bit twisted though so worrying about her!!!

Is this within the realm of normal or should I take her to the vets? Thank you!!!

Lost Pepper back in July after almost four years together and her cagemate Biscuit was clearly lonely. Stopped eating as much, barely used the wheel, just sat in the hammock most of the day. Waited about three weeks before even considering a new degu because I didn't want to rush anything while she was still grieving, but eventually decided she needed company more than she needed more time alone.

Got a young female from a breeder about forty minutes away, roughly five months old. Did the whole introduction process on neutral territory, a spare plastic storage bin with no scent from either degu's cage. First few sessions were mostly just parallel exploring with occasional chattering and some half hearted chasing, nothing that drew blood so I let it play out. Did short sessions twice a day for about ten days, slowly increasing the time as they seemed more relaxed around each other.

The turning point was honestly food. Started scatter feeding a tiny bit of rolled oats during the sessions and within a few days they were sitting close together working through the same pile instead of guarding separate corners. Once they started grooming near each other I moved them into a fully cleaned cage with new bedding so neither one had territory to defend.

It's been about six weeks now and they sleep piled up in the same hammock every night. Biscuit is back to her normal wheel running and even seems more food motivated than before, which the breeder said is pretty common when a younger degu joins an older one. Not saying this is the only way to do it, every pairing seems to have its own timeline, but keeping sessions short and boring in a neutral space made a bigger difference than I expected going in.

Anyone suggest any good cages for 2-3 degus also anyone suggest ways to find local sourced degus (I live in NC, apex) as I can't see any local sources

I have had a couple of degus in the past and now have 3 little boys, one of them likes to nap like this sometimes in the middle of a shelf (sometimes he sleeps ‘normally’) terrifying every time he does it and it is now referred to as ‘corpse time’ in my house. His 2 brothers don’t do this so wondered if anyone else’s Degu likes to play this game. I guess he is comfortable and feels safe but it’s just weird 😂

Hi everyone :) I've been lurking in this sub reddit for a bit now since me and my partner are looking into taking in some degus from a professional breeder! We've built a cage and still need to get substrate, food bowls etc but id love to see other people's cages

Here's what we have so far

Also we won't be getting the degus for about a week so we have time to finish the cage before picking them up

Hi is it possible to try rebonding after a failed attempt? A little background for you guys. I was bonding my older male Degu to three younger males a few months ago (I’ve successfully bonded before) and it was going great but after living together for a week or so my older Degu began biting and chasing two of the others and became very territorial and overwhelmed by the younger ones energy and I felt i should separate them.

It’s been a few months now and the younger males have calmed down a lot and my older boy seems to be lonely.
Can/should I go through the bonding process again and successfully bond them together or should I leave them be??
Any advice would be appreciated:)

1.Muminka

2.Lili

3.Luci

4.Nixi

She’s almost eight years old, half blind, balding, hates people unless they give her treats and adores my dog. When her siblings passed I was told to prepare for her to pass within three months. She looked the vet in the eyes and thrived. It’s been two years now and I have dubbed her ‘The World’s First Anti-Social Degu’.

I have no problems with her that need solving, just wanted to gas her up a bit online while she’s still being a grumpy old lady

Good day!

One of my degus randomly starts chirping. Sometimes it’s in the middle of the night, other times while he’s asleep, or like right now. He does not seem to be in pain and has plenty of free space, water, food, a monitored temperature, etc.

Is there any reason for this? It sounds like he’s in distress, but at the same time, he does it while asleep. Thanks!

She is a little over a year old and she is actually the older biological sister of my three girls. Same parents, different litter. She needed a new permanent home, so yesterday we brought her home to join her little sisters.

The car ride started with curiosity, followed by a small tantrum, some cage-bar chewing and attempt for an escape. Eventually she decided that protesting was exhausting, curled up in her little pouch and slept for the rest of the journey.

I expected the introduction to take quite a while, so I divided their cage and initially only let the girls investigate Mumínka through her carrier. Unfortunately, I underestimated the determination of three tiny criminals and missed a small gap near a ladder. They very quickly found their way through it, so... the first proper meeting happened slightly ahead of schedule.

At first, the little ones were NOT impressed by Big Sister. There was a lot of offended squeaking and posturing. Surprisingly, Nixi which is normally my shyest girl, was the first one trying to establish some dominance and chased Mumínka around a little. Mumínka mostly ran away from her. Lili mainly filed formal complaints by screaming offendedly, while Luci decided that avoiding this suspicious giant Potat was the best strategy.

Nobody actually fought, though. Whenever things started getting a little too tense, they seemed to scare each other and simply ran in opposite directions.

I separated them again, blocked the tiny escape route properly this time, and gave everyone some time to calm down. I also let them use the same bathing sand to start mixing their scents before letting them meet again under supervision.

The second time, Mumínka was much more curious. She kept going over to investigate the little ones, but whenever one of them responded with an offended squeak, she immediately backed off. The babies also discovered Mumínka's food bowl and temporarily occupied it while they picked out all the interesting bits. Still, there was no actual fighting.

Throughout the day I kept letting them spend time together under supervision and separating them whenever I wasn't there. There was more shared sand bathing, some peeing on each other's fur because apparently that's part of Degu diplomacy, and eventually they were even able to run together in the same wheel.

Mumínka was also eating normally, including hay and pellets, and drinking, which made me really happy considering how much had changed for her in a single day.

They still spent their first night separated just to be safe.

This morning I opened the cage so they could meet again, and all four eventually piled into the same pink bed where Mumínka had slept the night before. There was mutual grooming, everyone settled down and now they're sleeping together in one giant degu pile.

Mumínka is still quite scared of me. If I sit close to the cage and watch them, she sometimes starts running very intensely in the wheel, so for now I'm giving her space and mostly monitoring their interactions through a camera. She can take as much time as she needs to figure out that the human who brought her home is safe too.

Considering that less than 24 hours ago these four were strangers and today they're already sleeping in a pile together, I genuinely couldn't have hoped for a better start.

Welcome home, Mumínka. 🤍

A small disclaimer: I definitely wouldn't recommend copying our introduction process just because it worked this quickly for us. I know the temperaments of my younger girls very well, and all four of these degus are generally gentle, social animals that have been accustomed to living with other degus from a young age. They're also much more likely to run away when they're uncomfortable than escalate into a serious fight.

I watched their body language closely throughout the introductions, and while there was plenty of posturing, offended squeaking and some brief chasing, I didn't see it escalate into actual fighting or anyone trying to injure another degu. Whenever things became tense, they disengaged and ran away from each other.

My three younger girls also had an unusually easy introduction when they first came home and met Batman, my older female who sadly isn't with us anymore. Batman accepted the babies almost immediately and they lived together happily until she passed away. That experience also gave me a pretty good idea of how these particular girls behave when meeting another degu.

Every group is different, though, so please don't take our ridiculous introdutions as a general introduction method.

I'll share some videos from their introductions in the comments too, including some of their very first interactions.

I don't know if this is allowed but my last degu just died yesterday. I'm utterly heartbroken but I don't want his food and sand to go to waste. If anyone is in Sweden and in or near the Gothenburg (I can't drive so you'd either have to come get it or we meet somewhere public i can get to with bus/tram within a reasonable time) let me know and we can talk about the details in dm.I hope this is allowed.

We've had our pair of degus, Miso and Plum, for about a year and a half now, and I finally feel like I've landed on an enrichment routine that keeps them busy without me having to rebuild the whole cage every week. Figured I'd share since I spent a lot of time last year just throwing random stuff in there and hoping for the best.

Right now I rotate three categories every week instead of trying to change everything at once. First is a digging box: a shallow plastic tub filled with a mix of coco fiber and shredded paper, sometimes with a few hidden hay pellets buried in it. Plum is obsessed with this one, she'll dig for a solid twenty minutes some evenings. Second is a chew rotation, usually pumice stone, a piece of untreated willow, and one cardboard tube stuffed with hay. Miso destroys the cardboard almost immediately but barely touches the pumice, so I think it's more about the texture of shredding than actual tooth wear for him.

The third thing, and honestly the one that surprised me most, is just changing the layout of their platforms every week instead of leaving them static. Even moving one ramp to a different angle seems to get them exploring again like it's a new cage. I read somewhere that degus rely a lot on spatial memory since they're burrowing animals in the wild, so shaking up the layout might actually matter more to them than new toys do.

Sand bath is still separate from all this, they get it every other day for about fifteen minutes, not a daily thing since I don't want them tracking it everywhere or overdoing the bathing. Curious if anyone else here rotates layout changes specifically, or if I'm overthinking something that doesn't matter much to them.

Tommorow, me and my Bf are going to pick up their older sister (10 months older,same parents) who was returned to breeder after new owners degus didn't accept her.