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 and supposed to be supports for peas. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing with them yet but I did bake them in the oven on 160F for about 15 minutes first just to kill anything that may have been inside them.

Knobbly branch

The bottom also has a knobbly branch which I bought from the reptile section. It's been sand-blasted but still adds a nice natural look. When the weather decides to stop raining I'll go out and about and see if I can find any large rocks that I can use.

Cork Log - Hollow inside

On the next floor up they have a wooden bridge turned in to a tunnel and a cork tunnel. They were all snoozing in a ball of hay beside the cork tunnel this morning which was very cute! I took this photo yesterday so no 'goo pile' to see unfortunately.

Top section - 2 levels, nest box, wheel, chiller shelf, food and water

The top section of the cage is a feeding and exercise area. It was supposed to be the nesting area too as I bought them a 2 storey log cabin to nest in. They seem to prefer stashing food in there instead and sleeping down in the lower levels. Makes sense I suppose as they are burrowing creatures. You can just see one of the girls eating from the food dish in the bottom corner. :)

This section of the cage has a full base (with entry hole), a half level which houses the wheel and a small chiller shelf which is covered with terracotta floor tiles. Unfortunately I couldn't get it in shot but you can see the wooden walkway leading up to it in the top right corner of the photo.

All of the levels can be accessed by a series of wooden bridges and ladders like the ones in the photos above. It took them about a day to get used to everything but they're zooming around the place now making a right old racket as they clatter about and chatter to each other.

Next step? Getting them used to people. At the minute they either sniff a finger and run or hide away until you've gone. Don't blame them to be honest. The last human hand they saw scooped them up and shoved them in a box!