Help with degu diet!

[Morgaine]

I was wondering if everyone would be willing to share what and how much you feed your degus each day?

Looking around the net and in degu books there is a lot of different information and it's hard to find out whats right.

I want to give our degus the best care possible, so I would appeaciate some tips and experience from others who have been doing this longer. My husband and I have only been degu caretakers for 3 months now, so we are still new to it all

[MañasMom]

The best staple diet for a Degu is a good quality hay. The primary hay should be a good quality Timothy hay, but you can also include orchard grass, bermuda grass, brome grass and the like. It's best to stay away from Alfalfa because it contains a little too much calcium for a Degu. They should be given free access to as much hay as they can eat.


On top of the hay, use a good quality pelleted diet. This should be a pellet with no sugar, no molasses, no sugar cane, etc. You can feed guinea pig pellets, just check the ingredients. There are also a few Degu pellets on the market, and some of those are very good, but again it's important to check the ingredients.


When buying a pellet, make sure you do not get a "mix" with seeds, puffs, flakes, or anything extra in it. Those are very bad for Degus, and they will try to fill up on those and avoid eating the healthier pellets.


Other than that, it's good to include some veggies in their diet. Some good veggies to use are green beans, greens (including dandelion greens and the yellow flowers), leaf lettuce (like green leaf, red leaf, or romaine - pretty much anything but ice burg), some tomato occasionally, etc. Fruits contain a bit too much sugar for Degus, and so do certain veggies (like carrots). Those kinds of veggies are ok, just don't give huge amounts.


I hope this will get you off to a good start!

[Sasami]

I feed a degu food called Sun Seed Sunscriptions . My degus also have unlimited access to timothy hay, and sometimes I mix in other hays such as bermuda, oat, meadow grass, herb, brome, etc. I don't feed alfalfa, though.

Besides the hay and pellets, my degus also get fresh vegetables and herbs every day. Some common ones I feed are romaine lettuce, green leaf lettuce, red leaf lettuce, arugula, chickory, parsley, basil, and cucumbers. I feed high-sugar vegetables, like carrots, in smaller amounts. I never feed my degus fruit, although some people give it as treats.

Occasionally, I'll give my degus a peanut or walnut as a treat. Sugar-free cereals are also fine to give them in small amounts.

[Morgaine]

We give them Vitakraft Emotion Beauty for degus at the moment which they seem to love.

Not sure if it is appropriate for degus as a daily food, but it said it was on the bag, so we assumed it was. Any thought on this?

I haven't been able to get them to eat any greens yet. I tried cucumber and carrots which they wouldn't touch. I'm gonna give green beans and lettuce a go today and see if that is more of a hit.

Also we will be getting them more hay today. We have made the mistake of hardly giving them any hay at all, so I am glad that you both mentioned this. I read somewhere about how saw dust can give them respetorie problems and I guess my mind just somehow tranfered it to include hay so we didn't give them a lot

All the different hay types and what to get and what not to get are also a little confusing for me. I am danish and consider myself a fairly fluent english speaker. But all this hay lingo is a little above my normal vocabulary I guess I will just have to take the lists of hay to the pet store and hope the bags have english ingridient lists on them.

In a perfect world the petstores would be able to guide you and tell you what to do and not to do. But I realise that is an utopian fantasy at this point

Anyway, thanks for the help so far and please keep it coming. I will get right on changing their diet!

[Morgaine]

Okay, my husband and I went shopping and we got the following for them:

Red and green lettuce mix, broccoli and parsley (all organic)

Then we went to the petstore and got them Vitakraft VitaVerde, 2 different kinds.

- Dandelion+ apple mix
- Hay+dandelion mix

But when we got home I noticed that the dandelion+apple mix contains 20% alfalfa Why is it that alfalfa is bad for them? Will I still be able to give them the contents of the bag? (Its a little bag with only 80 gr in it). They already had some of it before I noticed the alfalfa and they went nuts for it.

Also: they had different mixes with the hay. I got the one with dandelion because that was mentioned here. They also have hay+pepermint and hay+nettle. Are these okay as well? It would be nice to mix it up a little

[Amethystbelle]

The degu mix you mentioned is fine

Regards hay there are lots of different types but most pet shops only stock a few so don't let the list scare you. The most important hay is timothy hay thats the really thick coarse hay. The others add variety but the timothy hay is the essential hay to get

Some degus won't eat fresh veggies so you can try drying them. Things like carrot, broccoli and cabbage dry really well in an oven at a low heat for a couple of hours. Degus seem to readily take dried veggies over fresh

Alfalfa isn't all that bad for degus and is ok in small amounts. All those mixes are fine and i use them myself the degus go mad for the nettle one especially

[Morgaine]

Thanks, I'm glad to hear the degu mix is okay, they REALLY love it. The only thing that worries me is that they seem to fight over the regular food like they do with treats. Is this normal. Our male Balder just sits himself right down in the foodbowl and if the others try to get some food he yells at them and does these wild kung-fu moves that sends the food flying all over the cage. Which actually seems to work in favor for the girls, because they just eat what he flings out by accident

Regarding the timothy hay, is this the brand name or the actual name of the hay. Because I haven't been able to find it anywhere and I can't seem to find a translation as to what it is in danish.

I take it they hay+nettle mix would be okay as you said you feed them nettle, but what about the pepermint, can they have that?

Thanks for the tips on the veggies, they are a bit disgruntled with them fresh. The broccoli seems only good for one thing: hurling through the cage!

Anyway thanks for all the tips, hope someone can clear up the bit about the timothy hay for me, as I would like to get them the right kind.

Merry christmas to all of you

[MañasMom]

Timothy is just the kind of hay it is. Here you can purchase several different brands - Oxbow, Peters Rabbit, Kaytee and a few others. I wish I could help you out with where to find some in your area, but I know zero danish!


It might be a good idea to consider adding at least 1 or 2 additional food bowls to your cage in different locations. It is a good idea to have at least 1 food bowl per Degu, that way, even the less dominant ones can get their fill of food too. Sometimes it even becomes necessary to have 1 water bottle per Degu, just depends on the Degus.

[Morgaine]

I will try to find the timothy hay. If nothing else I can ask around the different pet stores in town.

We added another foodbowl and it seems to have helped. We have had 2 water bottles from the very beginning for the 3 of them, but they seem to favor just the one - go figure

The dried veggies were a hit and now the broccoli gets eaten and not just hurled through the cage

[Amethystbelle]

Degus can be funny little things, mine would all rather squabble over one water bottle then use the other spare one

[lilbeyo]

Thanks for mentioning nettle mix & nuts... I'll have to give my boys a hazelnut and see what they do with it

As for me, I feed them once a day with this specialist Degu food mix I bought on the internet (it's got grass, petals, grassy stuff, pellets, mint & herbs in it), and was the one recommended by the breeder.

I top up their hay rack with a mixture of timothy hay & alfalfa... just a bit, though. I fill a storage box with hay, they pour half a small pack of alfalfa into it & mix it round. Apparently it makes it more tasty for them

Small amount of (varied) veggies every day, cut into little pieces. And I bought a pack of 'Degu Snacks', which is like flower petals & crushed peas/beans that I give them when they're out, or place around the cage for them to find

I found their favourite is crushed peas! And these weird dried yellow petals.

[Amethystbelle]

The dried yellow petals could be dandelion flowers, mine go mad for them

[lilbeyo]

Yeh that sounds about right! Quite bright coloured, but a bit curly? Yeh.. one loves them, and the other loves the crushed peas. But not fresh peas. Weird!

[zoo20000uk]

I use a website called Zooplus (Google it). They have all sorts of Degu foods and specialized feeds for small animals and, also dogs & cats etc. Mine love their big bags of dried dandelions and also their dried carrot chips. We have a food bowl clipped to the outside of the cage with these in them and, a couple of times a day, they each get a couple as treats. I give mine plenty of nibble wood and, also, I buy small bags of pear wood which they love to grab from my fingers and run off with to a corner. I also feed Guinea Excel and a special degu mix. They also have plenty of hay and I've got a 'digging tower' with just hay packed into it. The pellets and the hay are in the cage all the time but, once a day, I put a large handful of the degu mix in. I put a bit in their bowl and sprinkle the rest around the cage so that they don't fight over it. I have four in each cage and it's better if they can go far away from each other to have their treats. After they've eaten a bit, they each go to the bowl as they feel like it and, take what's left after the 'good' bits have all been eaten. As long as I only feed them the degu mix once a day, they eat the pellets at other times they are hungry. I also tie their nibble wood to the bars of the cage with sisal or coir string. It encourages them to play and gnaw on it. I find that, if the wood is just on the floor, they can't be bothered with it. I have hung a couple of bits of the wood from the roof of their cages and they try to drag it all over the place and end up swinging on it. They wont eat veg if it's fresh and will only bother with it if it's dried off a bit. That's why the carrot chips are a really good treat a couple of times a day. All their teeth are a lovely orange colour and they are really lively so I'm sure they are eating properly.

[Degus4Ever]

I have been researching this quite a lot and I have gotten help from people who breed degus.

With right feeding degus can live even 10 years. With bad feeding only 2-4 years.

Good food for degus:

Good quality chinchilla & guinea pig pellets (not much fats or molasses, no milk or eggs)
dry hay
herbs
alfalfa
roots
tree bark
branches
tomato
peas & beans (dried)
yellow bell pepper
carrot & sweet potato (only once a month or so, because of sugars)
nuts (ONLY for skinny degus who actually NEED to get fatter, normal weight for a degu is 120-300 g. Nuts have always at least 60% of fats, and fats are very bad for degus liver.)
cucumber

Do NOT give these to your degu

Soy (too much proteins can be dangerous)
fruits & berries (Degu's system can't handle too much sugars)
milk
eggs
honey
meat
insects
vegetables with much sugar
nuts or seeds with much fats for normalweight degus
Any type of bread (degus can't eat too much carbohydrates)