For people who first encountered cute degus, care and maintenance at home of this pet sometimes causes many incomprehensible questions. If you want these charming creatures to deliver you exceptionally useful emotions, familiarize yourself in brief with their nature, way of eating and lifestyle.
Contents of degus in the home
Weight of miniature creatures with a pretty appearance from 100 g to 500 g, their body length rarely exceeds 20 cm. The tail of the Chilean squirrel is long and covered with coarse wool; at its end there is a characteristic tassel. For those who are interested in degu, care and keeping it at home, it must be remembered that they are able to suddenly dump the skin from a tail like lizards.
Coloring of wool in animals is brown with gray and yellowish tones, outwardly they are a bit like chinchillas. The content of degus brings the owners a lot of emotions, pets are active during the day, they easily adapt to the person. Good news for clean people - the proteins are extremely accurate and do not emit unpleasant odors. It is desirable to contain them in pairs or in groups. Lonely degus are extremely restless, try to get away all the time, get used to the hands badly, sometimes bite.
Cage for squirrel degou
The animals terribly love to gnaw all the objects that come across on the way, so without a special cell for protein, degu you can not do. Care and maintenance of rodents in unsuitable conditions is associated with risk, if they escape, they can quickly damage furniture, wires or other valuables. It is necessary to list all the main features that a qualitative design for the habitation of these quick creatures possesses.
How does a good cell for degus look like:
- It is better to choose a cage with a solid pallet of metal, so that the pet can not gnaw through it a hole.
- For a pair of degues, a design with dimensions of 1.2x0.6 m and a height of up to 1 m is suitable.
- These are small animals and they are able to make their way into narrow cracks, the space between the rods do not extend more than 1.5 cm.
- Thin wire for the construction of a dwelling does not fit, small animals will easily break it and let it go through the apartment.
- The door must be fixed with a durable device like a snap-action carbine.
- Residential space for these animals must be equipped with several shelves, overlapping each other, to protect animals from falling from a height.
Instead of metal cells, many amateurs use glass aquariums with a lattice cover, hybrid designs of several materials. For pets, degu care and maintenance at home can be perfectly arranged in a design with a glass floor and an upper metal part. In plexiglas perform tiny holes, increasing the air circulation inside the dwelling. Many owners argue that the best option for a degu - vitrine or terrarium of glass and aluminum.
House for degus
Houses for animals in the home made from coniferous wood, it is bitter and not to the liking of rodents. If you have chosen as a decorative home a ceramic vase or a pot, then make a hole in it for the entrance, necessarily rounding the sharp edges. Home protein degu easily destroys the plastic walls with its sharp teeth. Particles of polymers, getting into the stomach, lead to poisoning, so plastic is not suitable for a house.
For degus care and maintenance at home is desirable to make the most comfortable, all decorative structures are reliable and safe. The weight of the house is deliberately increased to make it heavy, firmly fixing the "nest" in place. Light objects of the animal can be moved and turned in the cage. Entrance apertures are drilled so large that pets do not get stuck in them. To install an impromptu dwelling is necessary at the top, where the animals feel completely protected.
How to care for degu?
Like chinchillas, protein degu at home requires care for bathing in the care. It is desirable to purchase an imported mixture based on a zeolite composition of volcanic origin. It absorbs moisture and does not have quartz sand particles with sharp edges that spoil the fur. Baths with sand put in a cage a couple of times a week for half an hour and then clean.
Dry cleaning is performed every two or three days, a couple of times a month do a wet cleaning, using strong boiling water disinfecting the home. Degu are afraid of overheating, they are forbidden to be kept near batteries and at home with poor ventilation. In the draft, animals can get sick, the optimal condition is maintenance and care in a warm and well-ventilated room at a temperature of up to 25 ° C.
How to tame degu?
Immediately after the purchase of pets can not be bothered, let them a couple of days get used to the new apartment. When approaching the cage, always talk to rodents, try to offer them food with hands. When you see that the animal has become accustomed to you, try to stretch out your palm to it, calming it with tender words. In business, how to tame degus to hands, it is impossible to act rudely and impatiently. Bring the squirrel to yourself with a delicacy, offering pieces of apple. Repeat these actions every day and the animals will run for your voice.
Than to feed a squirrel degu?
You can buy special food for this species of rodents, it is now widely present in pet stores. If in the question, what to feed the degu, in your region there are problems, then use the food for chinchillas , the gastric tract they are arranged in a similar way. The main difference is that degus is contraindicated in sweet food, so make sure that there are no pieces of banana, carob, or other foods high in sugar in the diet. Be sure to install in the cage a drinking bowl, if the house has water of normal quality, then it is allowed not to boil it.
Useful products for degus:
- alfalfa,
- plantain,
- carrot,
- nettle,
- dried apples,
- dried squash and pumpkin,
- dandelion,
- oat flakes,
- corn,
- branches of fruit trees with the exception of stone fruits.
Degu diseases
It is better for rodents to offer dried foods, fresh food often provokes an intestinal disorder. When eating raisins, dried apricots, sweet dishes, pets develop diabetes, causing cataracts and other unpleasant things. Our rodents are southern creatures, with poor care and maintenance in the draft they catch cold. Sometimes there are skin diseases in degu, the symptoms of these ailments are manifested in the form of baldness on the parts of the body.
Common diseases in degu:
- cold,
- baldness,
- fungi on the skin caused by parasites,
- intestinal disorders,
- poisoning,
- allergies,
- fractures and other injuries of the limbs,
- diabetes and related illnesses,
- tumor,
- uneven teeth grinding,
- lack of calcium and vitamins in the diet.
Belchata degu - care features
With milk, tiny rodents eat up to a month, but only couple of weeks after birth they try to eat hay and other foods. Small degus proteins at home are sometimes fed artificially, in this case they are fed a feed in the form of a milk mixture from a pipette. It is desirable for the squirrel to offer vegetables cut into tiny pieces. Three weeks later, the kids flock to the cage confidently, constantly touching their parents, a separate diet for crumbs is not required. They are taking healthy deeper children on the basis of gender at the age of 6 weeks.
Reproduction of degus
In order to obtain healthy offspring, the degu protein is taken from different broods for reproduction. To give birth to females are capable up to three times a year, the first mating is allowed at the age of 50 days. The couple are settled together and monitored for her behavior, when a rodent fights occur, they are immediately seated. The female degus gives birth in 90 days, in the brood there are up to 12 pieces, but on average it leads to 6 pretty crumbs. At this time, the males are separated, if desired, they reunite the couple in a week, when the offspring will become stronger.
How to determine sex degu?
In the care and maintenance of domestic rodents, it is required to know exactly the sex of the animals. To solve the problem of how to distinguish a boy's degu from a girl, it is necessary to examine the trunk in the anus and genital area, placing the pet on the back. The genital organ and testicles of the rodents are hidden inside the abdominal space. The urethra in the form of a cone is present in both individuals, novice lovers sometimes confuse it with the penis. In females, the cone-shaped process and anus are practically near, and in males they are separated by a small but noticeable distance on the body.
How long do squirrels live at home?
In nature, they often fall prey to predators or diseases, rarely the squirrels of the degus live longer than 3-4 years. Comfortable feel the domestic degus, rodents with captive maintenance with quality care have every chance to please their owners for many years. Quite often cases where pets have pets lived up to 7-8 years and more, and some record holders with good genes reached 15-year-old venerable age.