Historical post first published on 22 July 2022. Events, figures, plans and appeals describe that period.
For a little while now, the website team, supported by the Oktodon association, has been working on a new project — yes, another one! That is how World of Degus, the international counterpart of Octodons.fr, came into being.
Worldofdegus.com
The aim is to help as many people as possible learn about Octodon degus and extend the reach of our articles internationally.
Octodons.fr was created to help degu owners find reliable, precise, checked information, following the example of Degutopia, once a leading English-language resource. Some of Degutopia’s information is now dated and the website is no longer regularly updated. We had been considering an international website for some time, but first needed a substantial body of content in French, our team’s original language, before creating a new resource for English-speaking degu owners.
Writing articles takes considerable time, and our team’s resources are limited. Setting up the new website took several weeks. At the time, our budget did not stretch to professional editorial work on every article.
Some elements had not yet been made available in English, including the hay and food comparison tables and lists of suitable and unsuitable foods. A few other pieces were also missing. Our plan in July 2022 was to have all the main articles available in English by the following week, so that we could finally return to writing new material.
Octodons.fr
With the English website nearing completion, research and writing were due to resume. An article about cataracts, diabetes and conditions associated with sugar would mark that return. Shorter, more practical articles were also planned: picking up a degu, the dangers of breeding for appearance, changing a degu’s diet and similar subjects requiring less research. Apart from health, we felt that the website now covered the essential foundations of degu care, so there would be fewer new articles in categories whose main subjects had already been addressed.
What would we do once every subject had been covered? That was unlikely to happen soon! Many topics still needed painstaking research, particularly diseases affecting degus. Once the subject coverage was complete, the plan was to review and correct every article, then introduce a more scientific section summarising recent research and veterinary work, alongside some articles intended for veterinarians, such as interpreting degu blood tests.
The Oktodon association
The team has plenty to do on this front as well. Oktodon is growing, with several adoption enquiries and potential collaborations with local associations, including SOS Chons-Pinous and organisations offering animal-assisted activities. One idea was to bring degus to the people involved in those projects.
We were also exploring foster homes and boarding arrangements, to cover a wider area and help more animals.
The association’s early results were encouraging. It launched in May 2022, although it was founded in March: the paperwork took a month and a half to arrive! Nine degus had already been taken into care, with seven going through the adoption process. The remaining two were beginning to improve after behavioural difficulties and would be offered for adoption when ready.
Thank you once again for your support! The figures and projects described here are a snapshot of July 2022.
Sources
Octodons.fr (2022). [BLOG] Une envolée vers l'international. Original post, 22 July 2022. https://octodons.fr/blog-une-envolee-vers-linternational/