The Defective Glass Water Bottle

My poor girls spent the whole night with hardly any water thanks to a dodgy water bottle. It seemed to be working fine but when I woke up this morning and the water level hadn't changed I realised something wasn't right.

I took the bottle out and gave them a glass ramekin with a shallow amount of water in, then headed to the local pet store for an emergency plastic one to put through the mesh. When I got back the water in the ramekin was gone and my girls started drinking from the new bottle as soon as I put it in.

Living World Glass Water Bottle

After much reading I found that there were quite a few others leaving reviews on glass non-drip pet water bottles stating that they didn't work. I wasn't going to be defeated though as I'm uncertain about using the plastic bottles (even on the outside) after my rats caused a flood with theirs a few years ago. I spent this morning fixing my glass bottle.

Shook the bottle to fill the nozzle and it worked fine until the nozzle was empty. What should have happen next is that bubbles should have risen up through the bottle as it refilled the nozzle. Didn't happen. At first I thought it may have been a defect with the double ball bearing inside but I 'Googled' it and found that it may have been a 'vacuum' problem. Sometimes a super vacuum is created when you tighten the nozzle on to the bottle and this prevents the bubbles and stops the refill of the nozzle. With my fingers crossed I slowly loosened the nozzle until it started to drip. Then I gradually tightened it again until the dripping stopped and then tested it with my finger. No water after about 20 seconds. After a bit of fine tuning I managed to get it to work again. My bottle now has to fitted backwards but I'd rather have that than have wasted £5.

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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.

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

Degu Versus the Wooden Wheels

When I bought wooden exercise wheels for my 3 girls I knew I was taking a gamble. Degus love to chew wood but in the back of my mind I was hoping that they'd realize that wheel destruction meant no running. After all, they are rather intelligent little rodents. Close up of damage After 6 months of little to no interest in chewing the wheels I thought I was on to a winner and had the only non-destructive degus in the world. This afternoon, after a morning out walking I came home to wheel destruction. Degu damage to Wooden Exercise Wheels 4 hours earlier they weren't particularly bad. Just some light gnawing around the edges and on the stands. Now they resemble something that's been, quite literally, blown apart by a grenade. It's like they woke up this morning and thought, "Right, degus. We're going to start chewing these wheels and we're not going to stop until they're gone!" It's a good job I didn't pay full price for the

The Degu Diaries

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