The degus

I have 7 degus at the moment (long may it stay that way!).

The girls are Bandit and Lemur, two sisters, both a year old this month, from a local hobby rescuer near me. I adopted them as company for my original girl, Toothy - and Pets at home adoptee - but she was sadly killed when the cage door broke and she got out while I was looking after a rather feisty little jack russel/whippet. Who continues to drive me bananas. I miss Toothy muchly - she taught B&L a lot about being brave and friendly, sadly they have now retreated to being scared again so I am having to work doubly hard to win their trust (repeated escaping by Lemur and me having to catch her has not helped that though).

These two will hopefully soon be joined by Hazel and Squirt, mother and daughter again from the same hobby rescuer who asked me if I could take them. Hazel is 8 months old; Squirt was from an unplanned litter and is now 3 months and ridiculously cute. The introduction is taking time - without Toothy to maintain order, Lemur is being a bolshy little madam to Hazel - but we will get there.


Then there are the boys. I got wind of these when I was looking for company for Toothy - a friend of my housemate's apparently had '2 girls and a boy' together (ARG) and said I could have the girls. He then got stroppy when I refused the boy (I didn't want to try and introduce boys together - I've tried before years ago and still have the scar), talking about him dying of depression from loneliness (it does happen, folks, really - keep your degus in pairs at least!). I relented and took the trio - to discover that all three were boys.

The oldest, Bear, is a sweet old fellow, with quite a grizzled coat (hence the name) - he is Lion's dad and sadly has a full cataract. This is caused by diabetes - very easy for them to develop as a degu cannot digest sugar properly. He'd been fed badly in a previous home (not the last one). Bear is of unknown age - he's an older goo, that's all I know. Lion and Tiger, an unrelated boy, are both around 8/9 months and both in good health luckily. They are feisty lads - they were in a small transport cage for a couple of hours yesterday while I completed their new cage and they were scrapping within a minute. But now they have mucho space they are happy.