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!
degu 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.
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