Skip to main content

A Degu Housing Headache

It has been a fair number of years since I owned any pets. My last furbabies were a boisterous bunch of 6 boy rats. The enjoyment of seeing the look on a person's face when they asked what kind of pets you have and you reply with "Rats" is priceless.

I was thinking of getting more rats but I wanted something a little different and after seeing a quartet of degu at my local pet store I instantly fell in love with the little critters!

degus #06degu by staflo, on Flickr

Let the Housing Headache Commence!

After a lot of reading, I've discovered that degus need a lot of space. My rats lived in a 6ft tall by 3 foot wide cage created from putting 2 smaller cages on top of each other. They loved it. Why don't I use it for the degus? Here's the headache…

1. Made of the wrong materials

While the majority of the cage is made from wire. The base, floors, ramps, and shelves of my old rat cage are made from plastic. While rats have a need to chew and gnaw as much as degus do, the degu will make short work of any plastic and is potentially dangerous to their health if ingested. I had a few gnawing issues with my rats but they stopped early on.

2. Bar spacing too wide

When I first got my rats as youngsters half of them escaped through the bars. They kept doing this for weeks and I eventually ended up having to clad the whole thing with wire mesh until they were big enough. It's recommended to use 0.5" wire mesh so once again my cage is useless with it having horizontal bars with a gap of around 1 inch and it looked awful while it was temporarily clad in mesh.

3. It was a huge pain to clean out

I hated clean out day. You had to literally try and climb inside it to give it a good clean and that's the problem with almost every store bought cage I've owned or looked at. The cages are great but they have the tiniest doors in the stupidest places and you end up taking them apart in order to clean them efficiently. What should only be a half hour job became a 4 hour job!

I must have spent around 6 hours looking at different cages and the only one which was ideal for degus (and looked easy to clean) was a specialist one which cost around £250.

I have only one option left…

If I want my new furbabies then I'm going to have to make a cage. Yes. Make one! I have next to no wood working skills so it should be fun to say the least.

From what I have seen of other degu cages that people have built on the web it actually doesn't look too hard. I particularly like this one by HIPPYKILLER2011

…and this one by NightwishRaven999

I've read a lot of conflicting information on the web about keeping degus in a wooden enclosure. Some say it's a big no-no but wood is the material of choice for pets like the degu in Europe.

As long as the cage is constructed correctly a degu can't escape by chewing through flat walls. It's impossible because of the way their teeth are positioned. They can only nibble at edges. So in theory, if you protect your edges then you're good to go.

All I need now is a sketch of the cage I'm going to build.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Big Degu Cage Build - Part Ten

It's almost 7PM and I'm not finished. At 5:30PM, while hanging the doors, I realized that there were no more screws of the correct size left and the shop would be shut before I got there. So I have only the top doors hung. Before bed I'm going to finish the inside by adding branches, bridges, ramps, ladders and other accessories. Then I'll fill it with wood shavings and hay ready for my new family members. Tomorrow I'll be outside waiting for Wilkinsons to open so I can get some more screws before I go to the pet store and my dad will kindly hang the remaining doors while I'm out. Hopefully they won't have sold out of degus before I get to the pet store.
4 comments
Read more

Degu Home Decor

The girls have settled down a little since I got them on Friday so while they were snoozing earlier this morning I took the opportunity to take some photos of their degu home decor. Bottom Section - Grass Hammock If you've read some of my Cage Build Posts you'll know that the cage is built in 2 parts, a bottom & top section, for easier moveability. The bottom floor of the bottom section is the digging pit. My aim is to make this as natural looking as possible. It is filled with around 15cm of wood shavings and some hay. I've used horse wood shavings as the shavings are large and allows the degus to burrow when mixed with the hay. Underground Hideout They have an underground area which is a hay tunnel sunk down in to the wood shavings. If you can't find one of the girls the first place to look is here because they love playing in it. You can also see a few willow branches. I got a bundle of 20 of these from B&Q for £6.99. They're about 50cm long a
2 comments
Read more

The Degus Have Moved In

This morning 3 little degus became the newest members of my family and they're the 3 cutest girls ever! I was up until midnight filling and dressing their cage ready for them to move in and they are loving it. 2 of them still think that there are only 2 floors and not 4, and all 3 have spent most of the day running in their wheel. Just before I settled down to write this they were all in a 'goo pile' on top of their cabin. It's a little dark in the room for a decent photo and I don't want to use the flash so I'll have to wait until there's a little more light to get a photo of them huddled together. They are all still a little flighty and scared of the camera but I managed to get a few decent photos of them. Don't have any names yet as I'm waiting to see what kind of personalities they have. My brother wants to call them Penny, Amy, and Bernadette… The Big Degu Theory! UPDATE — Here's a little video my brother recorded. :)
Post a Comment
Read more