Taz
Taz is a grey male chinchilla whose story is an all too familiar one to us. A new baby due to arrive or has arrived in the family and the family pet is no longer wanted. Taz's family had already had the baby when they decided that they could no longer afford him any time, but he was lucky in that we had an empty aviary where he could take up residence. He arrived with us on 23 May 2003.

Taz is a friendly chinchilla and, because we felt sorry for him being on his own, we eventually moved him in with our male degus, not quite knowing what the outcome would be. In fact chinchillas are related to the degu and Taz settled well into his new life with his smaller cousins, while they are quite unperturbed by his arrival in their enclosure, indeed games of tag have been witnessed between Taz and the degus!

The Eight Degus
Degus come from Chile, they are a ground squirrel and considered a pest in their home country because they eat the crops of corn on the cob. We believe they are related to chinchillas and they do indeed have the dense coat of the chinchilla. They have recently become a popular pet in Britain and, like many other small creatures are confined in unsuitably small cages - I have seen Degus kept in a large outside enclosure who grew to the size of small rabbits leaving me to think that they tend to become stunted if not given adequate room to grow properly.

Our eight baby Degus arrived here on the 15th of October 2002. A lady turned up on the doorstep one day to say that she had purchased three adult Degus from a garden centre in Dumfries, she only wanted two but the man in charge told her that the three he had were a family and could not be split up, she asked what sex they were and was told that they were all female. He claimed to have bred them and know all about them.

A few weeks after purchasing them two of them had babies and she came to us for help as keeping eleven Degus was out of the question. I suggested to her that her male was castrated immediatly and with her agreement arranged for Mossburn's vets to carry out the operation. I also assured her that in the circumstances which were not her fault we would take the babies on weaning. When the babies arrived we had them sexed by the vet and we think we have two girls and six boys though we will not be sure until the boys mature.

If this turns out to be the correct ratio the original owner will take the two girls back and the boys will remain here as one happy batchelor family. Had it been a higher ratio of girls to boys the males would have been castrated and then allowed back with the females, as it is it looks as if we will be able to save on a vets bill.

We do not know much about Degus but are obviously about to learn, we do know they are great wood chewers and hope they will not start on the fabric of the outside aviary where we have housed them! They eat chipmunk food and every variety of fruit and vegetables you can think of, they are also suprisingly friendly.