The Degu Cages Page.

If you are thinking of buying a degu please read my Before you buy a Degu page first for some of the realities of life with a degu. Pumpkin and Pinknose - There's nothing like a good sunbathe! I've recently started an Environment Enrichment page with ideas on how to keep your pets entertained. Also check out the Pet Shopping page which contain links to a number of people who make great cages that are both larger and cheaper than pet shop bought ones and also great sites for buying materials to make your own and accessories. Fluff's old chinchilla cage was converted to be used by Willow and Pumpkin the Degus. The middle floor was taken out, along with the mesh floor in the bottom. Degus should not be kept with mesh floors as they get bumble foot, which is a painful foot condition, from walking on them. Untreated pine panelling can be cut into lengths to cover mesh floors, or straw mats can also be used, if the floor cannot be removed. A large rat or even a chinchilla cage is ideal for degus. The only disadvantage of this setup is that your Degus may kick their bedding out of the sides of the cage so a mesh cage fitted on top of a glass tank is also a good idea - see the Jird Cages page for an example. A glass tank alone isn't ideal as they do like to climb. We've used a number of different beddings in the bottom for example Megazorb and then Ecobed - see the Bedding page for more details.
	They originally had a Wodent Wheel, as shown in the picture on the left, which they absolutely loved, but slowly destroyed. We used to keep a spare and recycled the backs, with holes cut in, as new fronts. If they did not have a wheel in the cage they tended to squabble. I then got a 8" solid wheel, shown in the next picture. They took a while to get the hang of it but then Pumpkin used it a lot and rubbed the fur from the bottom of her tail, and so I ordered a larger 12" John Hopewell wheel, which can be seen in the final picture. We originally had a great climbing frame made out of a kit designed for parrot cages that I bought from Pet's at Home in north Coventry. It did eventually go to the great wood pile in the sky though. The bird section of your local pet shop will often provide lots of great toys for climbing rodents. Degus tend to have little needle sharp claws so to keep them down a bit I have a lump of granite in the bottom of the cage and a stone parrot perch. These perches are sold to keep bird's claws worn down and will also work for Degus.
There is a cardboard roll, called a Chube, that was also bought from a pet shop in the bottom of the cage. They love to strip the paper off the outside. I currently have one suspended from the ceiling as can be seen in the final picture. They also like ripping up cardboard boxes and piling up the pieces to make a bed. Degus love to climb and our two get up the side of the cage at an amazing rate. I used to have an old leather belt strung across the top of the cage which they liked sit on, and now have the leg from an old pair of jeans as a hammock!! The only problem with this cage is that they tend to kick out bedding and droppings onto the surrounding carpet. We have a stand that catches the worst of the mess but you wouldn't believe just how far these two can kick the mess!! So recently we invested in some Perspex sheeting and created the "Paula and Chris's Patent Degu Crap Catching Device" around the cage which you can see in the photo above. Two food bowls are also necessary to prevent squabbling over food when they are fed and fresh hay is always provided in a hay rack at the top of the cage and a water bottle is on the back of the cage. We used put their sand bath on the top shelf for a short period each night as they tend to use it as a toilet if it is left for longer. They are a bit inclined to pee from the top shelf and I invested whether I can get them litter trained to use a dust bath fixed up there. It worked ok but they still peed from the top and so I replaced the shelf with a nest box, which they used for a while, but then after Willow had gone Pumpkin started to use it as a toilet. So I removed the box and replaced it with a jeans leg hammock - this also prevented them from jumping on top of the new wheel (see bottom picture).
	All small animals seem to love to sunbathe and this cage is placed so that they get sun in part of the cage every morning. If you do this you must make sure that your pet can get out of the sun and isn't left baking in the mid day sun. They are by the radiator, but the central heating is not on at the moment. It was quite funny that when I had the heating on when Dave the gerbil was ill I went in to move the cage away from the radiator to find the two of them curled up as close as they could get to it like little cats!! Here is Pumpkin having a doze at a vantage point on top of the climbing frame.
	After a while I decided to update the cage to give them more to do. I bought some Leap-n-Ledges to run up and down on and suspended a Chube from the ceiling. There is a forest hide on the floor for them to chew and get into and a new non-destruct wheel. The sand bath is in full time to prevent them from weeing down the back of the cage and it gets cleaned out regularly. Also note the stone branch has been put so that they have to climb over it on their way to the ramp effectively wearing their claws down.
	And here is the cage , with my new John Hopewell wheel 12" wheel. It looks enormous, but it is just filling previously empty space in the cage and she can get it rattling round ok. Because of the size she does not bend her spine when she runs on it. I have also re-arranged the leap-n-ledges in a more challenging arrangement. Because Willow was blind we had to be very careful about changes, and she had to have the climbing part of the cage so that she could always feel the next ledge with her whiskers. After Willow passed away, Pumpkin needed a bit more stimulation and I changed the cage around regularly. This had become quite challenging by the time I introduced Pinknose. The little fella was used to a single story cage and took a while to stop get the hang of jumping between the ledges, so my advice would be to start off with a simple arrangement. After a few months he had got so good at it he leaps from one side of the cage to another hardly touching the ledges on the way.
Sadly Pumpkin passed away and Pinknose lived with Digger for a while until her teeth problems meant we had sadly to have her put to sleep. We've now adopted Dizzy, who is a youngster and jumps around the cage very energetically. She can even walk over the top of the wheel without falling off! One thing to be careful of in this sort of cage is that Pinknose and Dizzy have a habit of shoving each other off the perches. So it's a good idea to hang something to stop them falling all the way to the floor. We now have a couple of hammocky hammocks (not shown) in the cage. Hammocks are best hung underneath shelves as degus seem to prefer to sleep somewhere with cover. Check out the Pet Shopping page and Wheels page for places to get these items, and the Environment Enrichment page for more ideas.

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