Chinchilla Weights

[Lillybabe]

At what point should you be concerned about gram loss in a chinchilla? I know some fluctuation can be normal but I am a bit concerned about Trixie. I weighed both girls on a nondigital scale on Monday and the weights came out to be 350 grams for Pixie and 325 grams for Trixie. Since this is a nondigital scale but rather one with a little line that moves... it's not completely accurate. However I was having trouble with the digital scale I bought so I have been using this one temporarily.

The issue is today I weighed both girls again. On the nondigital scale I got 325 grams for Pixie and only 275 grams for Trixie. The weight for Pixie makes me wonder if Monday's amount was off or if the time of day is playing a factor. I believe I weighed them in the early afternoon on Monday and this evening I weighed them more like at 10 PM. Trixie's weight concerned me as she feels significantly lighter when I pick her up than she did before. I weighed her several times to double check the scale.

I managed to get what I feel are fairly accurate digital weights for both of them now (at about 1 am) and Pixie weighed 328 grams and Trixie was only 273 grams. This means at the very least she's lost 25 grams in less than a week or 50 grams if Monday's weight was accurate. Should I watch her like a hawk for a few days? Supplement her diet? Take her to the vet? I have seen her eating both hay and pellets as well as drinking water. As far as I can tell from the few 'samples' she left me when crawling on me this evening her poops look good. This is the first time I have cared for chinchillas this young and I worry about them. I rearranged a little this evening to make sure there was easier access to hay and pellets incase her sister is hogging them all.

Feedback of any kind would be wonderful. The girls have been doing really well and I may just be getting paranoid. I think taking care of a malo chin makes you fear the worst at every sneeze.

 

[smhluvsmh]

I would weigh her daily, at the same time of day, for a few days. Do you have hay and pellets in more than one spot? I have a pair of bonded sisters, one weighs 700g and one 575g. Big difference. The smaller one is actually the bully and wheel hog, which is why I think she weighs so much less. I make it a point to give Micah her stick, rose hip/bud etc first and I have watched her throw it down and run to where Sterling is and steal hers. She is such a stinker! But Sterling gained 60g in a short time when I added a second pellet, water and hay spot. Now, no matter what, they both have access to what they want or need. Hope this helps some.

 

[Lillybabe]

Well Trixie gained a few grams. She's now 288 grams and Pixie is 322 grams. Not sure if they're being more active and that's why they both dropped a few or what. I assume in Pixie's case though that 6 grams isn't a lot to worry about. Going to keep weighing the girls everyday to keep an eye on things. If need be I can supplement them with Critical Care. I was so worried last night I barely slept at all. I now also have two pellet dishes in the cage. I moved the fairly giant hay box I have so that it can be accessed from either side so both girls can easily eat from it at the same time.

 

[Dreamlite]

I'm assuming these are relatively young chins. Are you using the same food they were weaned on? Some chins don't lik any kind of food change and can stop eating for days cause of it. I would add a second feeding spot just in case her sister is guarding the one. How old are they? How large is their cage? How long have you had them? New homes or bigger cages can always cause weight drops.

 

[Lillybabe]

I have had them for nearly two weeks now. They will be ten weeks old on Monday. They are still on the same food they were weaned on. I wanted to give them at least two weeks with me before starting to move them over to the new food. They are in half of a FN 142. The food bowls are in different locations but when watching them even when I had just one bowl Pixie did not push her sister out of the way. They would eat next to each other. I only put an additional bowl in there, just incase. They were about 250 grams and 275 grams when I got them. Trixie always being smaller than Pixie but they had been making steady gains. The fact they started losing, and Trixie losing a significant amount, is what worried me. She's gained a bit over 10 grams in 24 hours though, so maybe it was just a fluke? They have access to as much hay, pellets and water they could want. I am offering both hay cubes and loose hay. I will be watching them both closely.

 

[AZChins]

Young chins can fluctuate a lot with their weight from day to day. If they are healthy and eating, it might be best to not weigh them so frequently because...it will drive you nuts to track their weights too much. Here I like to go by how the chins look and feel and not depend so much on the actual number on the scale when they are so young. Sometimes their bones and muscles grow so fast that they can barely keep up with their intake of calories....they have little spurts of growth here and there, it seems.

I seriously wouldn't worry unless the chins stopped eating or started looking like they were actually losing weight. It can drive you crazy to closely scrutinize the weights of young chins because they are changing so much the first year of their lives.

 

[Lillybabe]

Susan, that makes me feel, so much better. That's basically the reason I wrote the thread. I honestly wasn't sure if they were suppose to fluctuate that much. My last chinchilla was about 9 months when I got him... so 50 gram losses were something to worry about. With him it usually meant it was stasis or time for his teeth to be filed again. It's all made me easily worried. I just want to make sure I am doing the right things for the girls! I mean they seem happy and healthy... hopping around like crazy. They are super friendly. Like... they already perch on my shoulder, often without me wanting them to since I'm typically trying to clean up their cage at the time. Trixie felt lighter but she's been eating. I see both of them taking frequent "snack breaks" and gobbling hay or pellets. I have a feeling they're gonna go through 5lbs of pellets every month, easy. So long as people tell me it's normal for young chins to gain/drop seemingly randomly.. that makes me feel a lot better. I was worried something was up with them.

 

[Lillybabe]

Okay... so I am dumb. Somehow I thought I had weighed the girls on Monday and gotten 350 grams for Pixie and 325 for Trixie... but according to the thread I posted it was 325 for Pixie and 300 for Trixie. This would mean that Pixie has not fluctuated more than like 2-4 grams total and that Trixie only lost 25 grams which is way less to freak out about than 50 grams. I feel better now.