My pet degu is injured

Question
Hello there,
I am seeking advice on what I should feed my injured Degu. I accidently closed the cage on her teeth. She was nibbling by the cage door and I didn't see her teeth there because I was focused on the other 2 degu's I have and it snapped down on her teeth. Her two front teeth are twisted and she hasn't eaten anything. She keeps rubbing her nose whenever she tries to eat.
I'm not sure what to feed her or what I should do?
There is no exotic pet vet around my area.

Answer
Hi Jessica,
There is a product sold by Oxbow called Critical Care which is a powdered food for herbivores that can be mixed with water and fed with a syringe. However, it is only available through a veterinarian. Even though you don't have an exotic vet, maybe you can find a vet that will help you if you can tell them exactly what you need.

As an alternative, you can get some powdered soy infant formula (the cheapest brand is the Walmart brand) and mix that in water to give her with a syringe. It doesn't really matter how much water you mix with it. Ignore the instructions for human babies.  The formula is very high in vitamins, minerals and calories, but it doesn't have enough fiber for herbivores, so you need to also give her quite a bit of canned pumpkin or squash baby food too. You can mix them together if you want.

If her teeth are permanently crooked, then they will need to be trimmed on a regular basis to keep them from overgrowing. See the info about teeth on my website at www.ratfanclub.org on the Rat Info page about trimming teeth.

Let me know if you have more questions.
Deb