Woke up to a Sneezing Degu

I am hoping that the sneezing one of my degus has seemingly developed overnight is an allergy to the wood shaving. They have all been sneezing a little here and there but it seems worse in one of them. She keeps grabbing her nose as if something is irritating it.

I must admit that when I first filled the cage the wood shavings affected my own nose something rotten so it's hardly a surprise if this is an allergy. My local pet store doesn't have any Carefresh animal bedding or alternative dust free recycled substrate I can use so until I can get down to Pets at Home I have temporarily filled the cage with straw and hay. I may continue with the straw, as they seem to love hiding in it, and use a small amount of absorbent material beneath it to help with soaking up the pee.

She seems happy enough in herself but I will keep an eye on her just in case.

UPDATE August 25, 2012 — Both the straw and hay were considerably dusty, which I didn't realise, but I have since cleaned them out again with hay that has been shook first. They still have sneezing but the worst one doesn't seem as bad. She sounded very congested but it seems to have eased a little.

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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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