Degus -- using their food bowl for other things

[Keppeh]

Whenever we clean their cage, we find that their food bowl is completely soiled. They sleep in there, eat in there (of course) and they use it for a toilet. Is there anything we can do to make sure there's something else for them to eat out of? They have plenty else to sleep in, they just like their water bottle. But I think we have a little "degu bed" that we might want to put in again. Maybe they'll sleep in that.


Anyway, any suggestions would greatly help!

[Amethystbelle]

Try using more than one food bowl. Try using smaller ones that attach to the bars of the cage and make it harder for them to use for anything other than feeding is my suggestion. Do they have a house / nestbox they can go into at night?

[Keppeh]

We used to. But they ate it.

[Keppeh]

And so we put a good one in, and they didn't use it.

[Amethystbelle]

I'd try using smaller food bowls as that will encourage them to sleep and do their business elsewhere

[Keppeh]

Yeah, they also seem to like using their dust bath as a litter box. This is great because they are sort of trained, but it's bad because then they end up rolling around in their droppings and urine.

[Amethystbelle]

They all do that i'm afraid. That is why some people don't leave their sand houses in as they use it as a toilet I leave all of mine in and just clean it out twice weekly to keep it fresh

[Keppeh]

How much sand do you put in for them? And what kind of encasement is best for their dust baths?

[pinkie1205]

I used a bath house for my chins. Before that I used a glass jar (that rolls around a bit, so you have to secure it) My chins would use the bath house as a toilet sometimes...sometimes if there was poo in there they would still use it (chin poo isn't squishy at all, it's rock hard) I just liked them to have sand available to them whenever they wanted. I don't know what I'm talking about, I've only had one hour of sleep and I know nothing about degus. I guess I"m just comparing them to chins in some ways.

[Keppeh]

Chinchillas are quite a bit like degus, so that would probably work perfectly fine for degus. I've given them a little plastic house, and it's thick and slippery, and they don't want to chew it. They just like that they can roll around in there and then come out. They did like kicking their dust around, but too bad, eh?

[Amethystbelle]

I use a sand house aswell designed for the job for all of my boys. The picture below is not the best but it gives you an idea of what i mean



I put a pretty thick covering of sand in for them (as you can see in the picture also) and i sive through it every other day to remove the debris they leave in there. Any kind of high sided container is ideal though or a large jar like Pinkie suggested, anything that contains the mess is ideal as they tend to get it anywhere. All of my sand houses are plastic as i'm lucky that my boys don't chew too much but you can also get ceramic ones aswell

[kandy]

I use a large ceramic pasta bowl for my degus because there's enough room for them to all bathe at the same time and it keeps the dust cool in the summer. The dust spills over a little but I don't mind cleaning it up.

[KLocke]

I use a fairly large Mason jar for our girls to bathe. It's large enough for one squirrel, so what usually happens is that one will go in and the three left outside will all roll together at the same time. If there was an Olympic sport for Sychronized Dust Bathing, my girls would get the gold!