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First, when you bring in a new animal into the family, you should have a quarantine period (about 30 days). It sounds like you brought the guinea pig in and immediately went from touching him to touching your chinchilla, I may be mistaken. I definitely think this has something to do with the...

I don't have as much experience with chins as the other folks here who have posted, so please take that into consideration. I had a similar toe situation with my chin a while back. My chin had started showing redness and swelling on his big toes (as if they were irritated by something). I...

I'm curious to know what "operant conditioning" you did to train Mojo to stop humping Eli? If it worked in a matter of days, that's amazing! (I may want to try it with my boy). Otherwise, you may want to play it safe and keep an eye on the boys. Sometimes, the bonding isn't worth the risk. (My...

It's so great you got this on video! Our oldest male use to do that before he hit puberty, and stopped after that. He would only do it with my husband's hands, so it seemed he really liked his smell. We attributed his behavior to puberty because it slowly started changing into him becoming more...

You've had a chinchilla long enough to know the work and care involved, so you're not going into it blindly. However, I have to ask what your primary reason is for getting a second chin? Is it for you, or is it for Gizmo? Are you bored of Gizmo and/or hoping that another chin could entertain...

We use Oxbow.

Out of curiosity, why is your heart set on getting a female chin? You mentioned you don't want to breed, so I would think a female is definitely out of the question.

I would play it by ear based on their personalities. One of our chins like playing any time of day. The other hates being bothered from daylight to sundown. The chin that plays anytime used to let us know when he was tired. We used to sit on a bean bag in a play room and just watching him play...

My younger chinchilla took 2 years to warm up to me. He doesn't really like out-of-cage time because being outside of his cage is just too scary (he acts like something is going to fly out of the sky and swoop him up for dinner). Luckily, I have LOTS of patience, so everyday I sit in front of...

He's definitely not acting scared. He seems pretty calm. Do you have a Blue Cloud rock in his cage? Are you giving him a dust bast regularly? Also, from the video, it's hard to see if he has any other wooden ledges in his cage where he can actually spread out and lie down. My chins will...

One of our chins was that way too when he was younger. We ended up making a few "ramps" for him that helped him build his confidence enough to start jumping. The ramps were cardboard tubes set at an angle to get from the lower level to the top of whatever we thought was at a safe height. First...

If you're going to use fleece over the wire, you might consider using several layers at a time to soften it. Maybe adding a tile or two over the fleece might help keep it down and give the chins an optional solid surface too. Otherwise, you might consider surfing the net to see if there are any...

Hi! This thread is a month old, so maybe my suggestion might be too late: If you approach this with a training mindset, the logical step to take to "untrain" your chin is to shape the new behavior you want. In this case, you should try cutting playtime short before she gets cranky and bites...

There are A LOT of stories here about why wire bottom cages could be harmful to chins. Have you tried searching the forums?

I can't see anything in the pic you attached.

My chin developed a hair ring after continuously humping his stuffed toy and fleece bed. One day, I noticed that he was checking himself constantly during playtime which was unusual behavior for him. When I turned him over, I saw his penile "cone" looked swollen so I checked him and saw the hair...

I'm a little confused about a few things in your message. You said it's been a while that you've had chinchillas and that you just got them in June. Since then, one died of heatstroke and you still have four, correct? I understand that you felt obligated to take on more chinchillas, but I'm...

We would save or buy different sized cardboard boxes and make holes of varying sizes in them. Then we would stack them or lay them out in different formations and let our chins explore all around and inside them. They would love it when we changed it up some and they had a "new" place to...

My chin, Echo, used to make that noise, but doesn't anymore. The first time we heard it we thought he was choking on something! Every time he did it we would check on him to see what was wrong and he would just look at us (sometimes, half asleep). We came to interpret it as a lonely calling to...

When you do your research, make note of the differences between a male and female chinchilla (besides the obvious one). The females are the ones that spray when they're scared. Males do not spray, but you should read about hair rings and what will be required to check him on a regular basis (and...