The Degu Diaries

It has been a long time since I last posted. I have a mountain of things to do related to my work and while I've had time to tend to my 3 girls, I just haven't had time to post anything new.

As we all know, Claudia Degu is a bit of an intrepid explorer and loves to play in my jumpers while I'm wearing them. She even went to sleep in there the other day! Courtesy of my brother, here's a little Vine clip of her popping out to check that the non-sleeve world still exists. Enjoy!

This morning I fed my goos around 9:15am like every morning. I filled their food bowls, gave them some fresh water and hay, and replaced their toilet roll. Yes, you read write. Thankfully they aren't suffering from some kind of degu toilet trouble. They just like to play with it.

If you've been following my experiences as a degu owner you'll know that my girls decided to destroy their exercise wheels . I was incredibly lucky to even get the 6 months that they lasted.

Choosing the right bedding for your degus (or any animal) is a bit of trial and error. I've tried Bedmax, Finacard, and now I'm trying Megazorb . First impressions are less than satisfactory. It is very, VERY dusty. I've spent the best part of the afternoon armed with a hoover and a pair of tights trying to extract some of the dust. I've read mixed reviews and so far I'm leaning towards hating it. It has the potential to be incredibly good as it seems to be very absorbent.

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 ...

Myka Degu eating the Finacard As it turns out, my degus aren't allergic to wood shavings after all. Shortly after I got them I had to change to Finacard because I thought it was the wood shavings making them sneeze. Coincidently the sneezing stopped when I changed the bedding.

from left to right: Claudia, Mrs F and Myka I've just finished doing a spot clean of my girls' cage. This is them chilling before I went in and destroyed their home. As you can imagine it's not quite so peaceful now. Claudia hates cleaning days with a vengeance. I'm going to have to catch her on camera one day because her antics are hilarious albeit a little painful for me.

Nothing exciting to report on the degu front. Damages to the cage have been repaired. Claudia and Mrs F are still having the occasional heated argument, and Myka still has a taste for cage. She also has a taste for fresh basil leaves.

Every time I open the cage door Myka Degu takes a bite sized chunk out of the edge of the MDF. It's a little bit of an oversight on my part as I didn't think It would need protecting as they can only get at the edge when the door is open. I've left repairing it for as long as possible but the tools had to come out today as it's too bad to ignore any longer. I actually watched her pull a piece off with the door shut!