Hand-reared Degu Pups

Well, we've all made mistakes, and we made a big one! Out of our large intake of female degus, we actually had a missexed male within the group. One of Deirdre's pups, Darcy turned out to be a 'Dylan', shall we say. He was promptly removed from the herd, and we knew we were expecting babies at some point soon.
This was definitely one of our most testing times during rescue. The amount of self-doubt, heartbreak, and sleepless nights cannot be underestimated.

Warning: we will be discussing themes including stillbirths, culling of pups, and death which may be distressing to some readers. Discretion is advised.

As you can imagine, once Dylan became fertile whilst living with 12 other females, some degus were impregnated. As a result, we welcomed many degu pups.

We want to try and go in chronological order of events, so please excuse if this post is a bit all over the show (it was just as challenging to live through it)!

Litter Number One:

The first litter was birthed by Dina on the 25th of January 2020. There were four beautiful pups. Initially, Mum seemed to take quite well to motherhood.

Unfortunately, we started to notice the pups were losing weight and Dina seemed to be ignoring the pups. We made the tough decision to take over and hand-rear the pups.

Despite our best efforts, we did lose the runt of the litter, but the other three continued to do well. They were named Darth, Velma, and Vera.

Litter Number Two:

Donnie gave birth a day after Dina. On the 26th of January 2020, she welcomed 4 gorgeous pups. For unknown reasons, Donnie made an attempt to cull a pup. This pup had a bite wound to the top of his head which caused an onset of neurological. Other pups had minor bite wounds too. The kindest decision was to remove the pups from Donnie and hand-rear them as well.

Unfortunately, the runt passed away. On the same day, the pup with neurological symptoms had a total seizure and passed. 2 pups continued to thrive and were named Vava and Dooku.

The runt of the litter who sadly did not make it.

Dylan's Passing:

When we discovered that Darcy was, in fact, a male, he was renamed, Dylan. 

We decided to attempt to bond him to our only other stable males - Dave and Donkey.
During the initial stages, bonding went so smoothly. We felt confident in trialling the boys in a cage together. Again, it all went well.

Unfortunately, Dylan suddenly sustained a nasty facial injury, head injury, and other mild external injuries from Donkey during the bonding process. 
As a result of the severe trauma, Dylan went into physiological shock. Shock is a sudden drop in blood flow resulting in the body's organs not getting enough oxygen or blood. There are many different types of shock; all with numerous causes and symptoms. Dylan's breathing became shallow, his heartbeat was irregular when auscultated, and his body temperature was dropping.
We were curious if the head injury sustained could've caused neurogenic shock which disrupted his CNS?

Despite fluids, broad-spectrum antibiotics, and strong painkillers, we were unable to stabilise Dylan and he remained pretty unresponsive. Tragically, he passed away.

We've bonded numerous species of animals more times than we can count. Dylan's story shows that people are not exaggerating when people say when bonding goes bad; animals can and do die! Do we believe Donkey was trying to kill Dylan? Absolutely. Did we intervene quickly? Yes. The outcome was still a tragedy. 

Dylan remains the only animal we've had die from bonding, but we've certainly had many animals sustain huge trauma and, thankfully, pull through.

Please be very careful when trying to bond animals. If you don't feel confident, many rescues - like ourselves - are often happy and experienced enough to bond animals.

Dylan passed away on the 27th of January 2020.

Litter Number Three:

Dellar gave birth on the 29th of January 2020 to 4 pups. Discovering this litter was quite disturbing. One pup had been half-culled. To prevent undue suffering, we rushed the pup to a vet OOH for humane euthanasia. The runt sadly passed away very quickly.

The final 2 passed away 24hrs later.

Litter Number Four:

Dorothy gave birth to 5 pups on the 3rd of February 2020. 

Dorothy was also surrogate to one of Deirdre's pups as they failed to suckle when hand-rearing. This is a common problem as formulated milk doesn't contain mammary hormones produced from a nursing degu-mother. As a female degu has four pairs of mammary glands, we were not worried that she'd be unable to feed or endanger her pups when picking her as a candidate for surrogacy. 

Unfortunately, despite ours and Dorothy's efforts, the pup failed to have a suckling response and passed within a few hours.

Randomly, Dorothy culled 2 of her pups around the 6th of February and neglected her litter. We decided to attempt to hand-rear the remaining 3 - later named Valde, Voldemort, and Valentine.

Litter Number Five:

Dallas gave birth to 3 pups on the 3rd of February 2020. All pups were stillborn. 

Litter Number Six:

Deidre gave birth to five pups on the 3rd of February 2020. 4 were culled and 1 survived. As we mentioned, we gave this pup a chance via surrogacy with Dorothy. Sadly, the pup didn't make it.

The Survivors: 

Hand-rearing any animal is an enormous undertaking. Degus - like most rodents - produce what is called an altricial young. This basically means that an animal is born helpless and completely unable to fend for themselves.

Newborn degus are unable to thermoregulate or even void their bowels by themselves. They need to be fed and taken care of for prolonged periods - often several weeks.

Darth:

In terms of hand-rearing, Darth was the perfect pup to raise. He had a big appetite, gained a good amount of weight every day, and had no issues defecating and urinating, either.

Darth is a happy and healthy boy who now lives with 2 of his family members.

Velma:

Similarly to Darth, Velma was a strong and healthy pup whilst being hand-reared. She overcame all the hurdles hand-reared animals often face.

Velma lives happily with 2 of her family members.

Vera:

Of her siblings - Darth and Velma - Vera was the smallest pup to survive. We're so pleased she was able to catch up with her siblings.

Vera continues to live with her sister, Velma, and her close-relative, Vava.

Dooku:

Dooku was always touch-and-go when being hand-reared. He was a good eater and was good at urinating, but always found it incredibly difficult, stressful, and painful to defecate. 

Things suddenly turned south and Dooku went into shock. Stimulating his anus would have him scream in pain. Once we stabilised Dooku, he was given a small amount of oral Metacam. We decided Dooku needed a veterinary examination. 

Whilst at the vets, Dooku went into shock again. The vet was able to tell us that he had a non-functioning anus and the issue was unable to be resolved. It was likely that Dooku was going into shock due to bacteremia.

Sadly, it was considered inhumane to continue raising Dooku.

Dooku was humanely euthanised on the 4th of February 2020.

Vava:

Vava is Dooku's sister. Hand-rearing her was very touch-and-go throughout. We honestly weren't sure she would make it at one point.

Vava frequently suffered from severe bloating when being hand-reared. 

She was given Infacol. We also found adding ground-down adult degu faeces into the formula was helpful too. 

Degus perform coprophagy which may seem revolting to humans, but it's an essential behaviour for many herbivores.

Fortunately, when Vava was weaned onto a degu diet, she soon caught up with the other hand-reared pups.

Valentine:

For an unknown reason, Dorothy's pups had some extremely delayed development and were also very touch-and-go to raise. Out of Valentine, Voldemort, and Valde, Valentine was the strongest of the trio. 

Valentine suffered from severe constipation. Despite our efforts to relieve him ourselves, we had to introduce lactulose into his formula and offered a small amount of Oxbow critical care. Fortunately, the additional fibre and laxatives helped a lot.

As mention, the boys suffered from delayed development. Valentine remained small and almost entirely naked for a long time - longer than expected. Today, you would barely recognise him!

Voldemort:

Interestingly, Voldemort had the opposite issue to Valentine. Voldemort had severe diarrhoea which left his skin sensitive. We ensured he was kept clean and treated any irritated tissue with topical Flamazine cream. We found that mixing ground-down adult faeces into his feeds helped with the diarrhoea, too. He's grown into a big and strong boy now!

Valde:

Valde (in the middle) also suffered from diarrhoea and required topical antibiotics to relieve any irritated tissue. When hand-rearing degus, it is advised that you try weaning them onto a typical captive degu diet (solids, starting with rolled oats) as soon as possible - some even start introducing solids as the pups turn two weeks. The three brothers were quite willing to eat solids alongside their formula from quite a young age. We believe having pups of different, but similar, ages all being hand-reared together was beneficial for the youngest pups - of course, we didn't introduce them until it was safe.

Despite fighting for his life, we were heartbroken that Valde was able to survive the toughest part of his battle, only to be defeated as he appeared to be 'thriving'.

Although the odds are stacked against any hand-reared animal, it's always devastating to lose a life.

Despite how it looks, the small degu pups couldn't get through the bars!

Valde passed away on the 5th of March 2020.

All of the surviving 6 pups are available for adoption!