Today has marked a week since we brought Kimchi home from the Lisburn Pets at Home adoption section and I am so pleased to have brought him home. He is such a gorgeous degu with the funniest little personality. He was brave and adventurous as soon as he arrived.
No fear at all and loves his grub!The other 3 boys were certainly interested in what was happening – how dare this newcomer come into their territory! xD
I thought I’d be a little sad and document all his “firsts” with us.
First taste of herbs – he’s definitely a fan!First sandbathFirst crock – needless to say he loves them!First chill out on his homemade hammock
I have been having so much fun getting to know him and he certainly seems to enjoy getting to know us too, he’s an outgoing degu to say the least!
I’ll just sit here while you weigh my food outSelfie time!My wee parrot on my shoulderWe had an escape – like I said, he sure is adventurous!
And not to leave out the other 3 boys they are still doing well and getting on great!
Curious little facesI wouldn’t be getting in you way of cleaning would I? xD
I’m so glad we brought our original degus home back in March 2014 as since then we now have had 5 degus and all of them have their own personalities and bring so much joy to our everyday life with their cuteness and silly antics ❤
It’s been a while since I last posted about our little degu family so thought I would share some photos and something a bit different from dog training as it seems that’s all I can talk about at the moment!
Abel and the babies are still getting along brilliantly although they are definitely not babies anymore! I just can’t get out of the habit of calling them the babies haha. Abel and Azoth seem to be best buddies but they all get along great and I love sneaking in and seeing them all cuddled before they run to their cage door expecting their food!
The babies have definitely come out of their shells from when we first brought them home and they have such lovely little personalities. Durzo is very sweet and shy, Azoth is more confident and is very smart.
The babies coats have become so lovely too as they have grown, they are an agouti piebald colour and have white at the ends of their tails too. I think they are adorable although I love all degu colours! I hope in future to again have another full agouti degu like our Cain was. It’s been around 10 months since we lost Cain and it still hurts to think about him – he really was a special little man who was full of personality and charm and always made us laugh at his antics.
Cain in his better days ❤
I am definitely glad we got Abel his two new brothers and that he is still healthy and happy. Abel is roughly 3 years old now and as you can see he is definitely the tamest of our degus and he especially loves his dad.
And because you all know I like a bit of training and enrichment for our pets here are our degus in training to push their little trolley/shopping cart.
Aren’t they adorable, I love our little degu boys ❤
I just wanted to share the good news that the degus are finally integrated! They have been living together now for a month since their first “sleepover” on Sunday 27th March.
Degu piles finally 😀
In the last degu post I mentioned how the intros weren’t off to the best of starts but we persevered. We spent about a hour each day before bedtime (degus are diurnal so most active at dawn and dusk) doing intros. We started with having them separated by one of the panels of the run and feeding them near each other to hopefully create positive associations for Abel being near the babies .
Baby degus = food for Abel
After a few times doing that he wasn’t making any aggressive gestures through the bars so we decided to take the barrier away and let them interact in a fairly empty run. We took out most things to avoid guarding or if they fought so they wouldn’t get stuck in any enclosed spaces making it difficult to intervene.
Note the towel for emergency interventions – degu bites are painful!
We did this process (separated in the run until settled, swapping the sand baths then removing the barrier) for another while as we were set back a few times by fighting which got slightly heated but nothing too viscous. They were able to eat hay together and forage for herbs without any fighting which was a positive sign. After that we were able to swap the sand baths in their cages and plop them straight into the run together with no issues.
They were getting there but we still had some preparations to do before we could put them in the same cage together. First we had to start introducing more “furniture” into the pen such as their wheel and tunnels etc so they could get used to sharing with each other. We also started feeding them their meals in the pen to see how they would react. They had a few warbles and shoving over their food bowls but otherwise they were happy to share their wheel and did lots of grooming.
The final step of the intros was to get them used to being in the big cage together which took another bit of time as we did only short periods to begin with and increasing the duration. They had a few scuffles to begin with as they had to establish their “hierarchy” again in a new area but they eventually were able to tolerate each other longer and longer each time. Finally on that Sunday night they were so settled in the cage and after we got ready for bed we decided to leave them in overnight and they have been a little degu pack since 🙂
I am so pleased with them, they are all so settled and it really was worth all the effort and time we put in. They all seem much happier now together, the babies aren’t as nervous and Abel has stopped accepting rubs from us, which was really bittersweet but it means that he actually was crying out for company and now he’s happy with his little adopted goo brothers. I really do love the little critters, they are family to us 🙂
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