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The first thing you need to do is sex your degu before you can breed. So here is some thing to help you and pictures to guide you
The difference between a male and a female degu is as follows, as you can see male degus have their posterior further from the urine opening than the female degus have. That's the main sign by which you can separate them at a young age. When a male degu has grown up, there is no problem to separate him from a female. Usually, the male degus are bigger than female ones.
Starting a family
Watching a degu family is a beautiful experience, because they are very social animals. If you want to have young degus: buy one male degu and one or more female degus. It is not recommend keeping more than one male degus in a single cage - in the nature there is always one male who becomes the father of the whole colony. More males can fight to get this position. But think of this very carefully - degus could have up to four litters a year and they can have 8 puppies in each litter. If you have decided you want your degus to have children, remember that it would not be fair to them to separate the male from the female in the future… when you decide to stop having degu children. The male and the female degus will get attached to each other.
Another interesting fact with degus - a degu female can become pregnant within 24 hours from childbirth. If not, she can become pregnant again after a few weeks - when she stops nursing her children. So, it is recommended to separate males and females for one or two days after the childbirth to avoid another pregnancy, which could stress the female through the nursing period.
MATING
Females grow up sexually sometimes as early as 6 weeks old or it could take up to a year. It often happens that the father fecundates his daughter, so you should not keep the puppies with their parents for a very long time. Males grow up later than females sexually. Usually the males grow up sexually after a couple of months. Sometimes a mated pair of degus will not have their first litter until they are 2 years old or later.
Degus become a full adult at around 50 -55 weeks old and at this age are generally: fully reproductively competent. The average age of first conception is 6 months but this can vary between 45 days to 20 months! The average weight (of the female) at first conception is 205 g.
Prior to breeding degus, the females need to be placed near to a male so they can see, hear and smell him. The reason for this is because female degus induce ovulation when around the male: therefore will only become fertile in the presence of a male.
You may notice your degu’s dust bathe more frequently around breeding season and this can be a good indicator of when it's a good time to breed your degu’s. Before breeding degus you should slightly increase the amount of food your male degu gets, as males use more energy during reproduction than females. Breeding is actually a very relaxing time for both male and female degus. This is when cortisol (stress) levels are the lowest and in the males, this drop in cortisol allows higher testosterone levels to trigger the urge to mate.
The breeding season on average starts when it begins to get light at 07:00h and dark at 19:00h (about 12 hours light: 12 hours dark). This usually coincides with the start of winter coat shedding around May-June. Breeding times can be highly variable, especially as pet degus in the northern hemisphere are often able to breed throughout the year. However conception (fertilization) typically occurs around September-October. When the degus are mating, they produce a strange sound and move their tails around.
PREGNANCY
A pregnancy is recognizable in a female about one month before the birthing. Do not try to catch her or try to pick her up during this time: as this can cause an abortion or the death of a pregnant female. In the period of time when the pregnancy is obvious, the male degu builds upon the nest in their nest box, so you have to give them enough nesting material (paper, hay, napkins etc.). If you have more than just these two degus, the rest of them will mostly stop using the nest box. Because of this, you should prepare another nest for these.
The pregnancy period for degus is longer than that of other rodents. It is about 90 days long. The birth of a puppy does not normally take longer than 45 minutes, and some females can even give birth to five children in this amount of time but the time childbirth takes varies a lot. If there are more females in the cage, they help the mother with the birth. If there are more pregnant females, they put their children into one nest and suckle them together. They don't care about which child belongs to which mother, as all the adult degus take care of all the children. Sometimes, females who bore sooner also nurse if their children are old enough not to be nursed. Female degus have 4 pairs of teats and when nursing their children they lay above them.
A male degu is a great father - he helps out with the education of the children, takes care of them and plays with them. You should separate the father from the mom for about 3 days as she can get pregnant right away again and this will lead her to poor health. After the 3 days there is no reason to separate him from the female degu and his babies any longer babies - it is better letting them be together. The degus are different to other rodents concerning this. With hamsters, for example, you should remove the male because he could kill the babies.
