Degus come from a cool, arid mountain climate and their bodies are poorly equipped for a hot spell in a modern home. They do not sweat in any useful way, their thick coats hold heat, and a cage placed near a window can climb to dangerous temperatures while the room itself feels merely warm to you. Heat protection for a degu is therefore about relocating the cage before the day peaks, offering cold surfaces he can choose to use, and checking him far more often than feels necessary.
Move the cage before you try anything else
Relocate the enclosure to the coolest room in the home, ideally a north-facing or interior room, out of direct sunlight at every hour, because a cage that is shaded at nine can be in full sun by noon as the light moves. Keep it away from conservatories, lofts, and upstairs rooms where heat collects, and off sun-warmed floors. Close curtains on the cage side of the room during the hottest hours while keeping air moving gently around, not blasting directly at, the enclosure. If the whole home is hot, a cage moved to a tiled bathroom floor area or the lowest storey buys several degrees, which for a degu is the difference between coping and crisis. Do this move in the cool of the morning, calmly, with cage mates together, so the relocation itself does not add stress heat.
Offer cold choices he can approach or leave
Place ceramic tiles or a marble slab, chilled in the fridge, on the cage floor as a voluntary cool bed, and rotate two tiles so one is always cold. A frozen water bottle wrapped in a thin cloth, rested against the outside of the bars or in a corner he cannot chew through to the plastic, gives a cold wall to sprawl beside. Degus are committed chewers, so anything frozen or plastic must be positioned where teeth cannot reach it, or offered only under supervision. Refresh drinking water more than once a day, check the bottle tip is flowing, and top up hay so appetite continues, since a degu who stops eating in heat is telling you something important. Dust baths can stay available but keep sessions short, and skip handling and out-of-cage exercise during the hottest part of the day entirely.
Recognise overheating early and act on it
A hot degu stretches out flat, breathes fast, drools, stops responding normally, or lies limp and uninterested in food and cage mates, and those signs call for gentle, gradual cooling and an urgent vet call rather than home experiments. Move him to the coolest spot, offer the chilled tile, and dampen ears lightly with cool, never icy, water while you phone, because plunging an overheated small animal into cold water causes dangerous shock. Social groups need watching individually: a quiet degu at the bottom of a huddle can overheat while his companions look fine. During a heatwave, divide the day into named check-ins so water, tiles, and behaviour are reviewed morning, midday, and evening, and logging those rotating checks in KinsLe with Care Teams ensures the midday visit, the one that matters most, never falls between two people who each assumed the other went.