I'm glad you aren't using your age as an excuse for this. I just turned 22 and I've had chinchillas since I was 12, almost 13. I have NEVER let a chinchilla get in that kind of condition and I've owned over 20 chinchillas at one time since I was 14. I never let a chinchilla go without a bath when needed and I've never left a wound without investigating it thoroughly. If I ever noticed even a tiny wound, the chinchilla receives a FULL BODY inspection...both visual and by touch. They have a lot of fur...common knowledge which is easy to hide wounds.
This worries me. Chinchillas are ALL curious and chewers by nature. When out, they explore and chew things out of curiosity. They don't just sit and not care about the things around them. Prey animals have to become familiar with their surroundings to feel safe, hence the exploration. Chewing is because they are rodents and their teeth are always growing. To quote a very smart woman "chins chew and poo, that's what they do".
There is no "learn as you go" with chinchillas. That kind of mentality endangers the lives of the chinchillas in your care. You need to take HUGE steps back. Just by looking at the animals on your website listed as your "breeders" you do not have a good gauge of what a quality animal should look like. You need to have all your animals evaluated for quality, my assumption is that none of them are "worthy" of being in a breeding program. You should also NOT be working with recessives as they are already suffering on quality and difficult mutations to work with. By breeding them because it is a color that intrigues you without any idea of what goes into the mutation and it's breeding, you are only doing harm. You need to go back to just having ONE breeding pair and taking things slowly.
Being as you are a member of so many chinchilla forums, I'd expect better from you. Wounds are common knowledge and basic care with chinchillas. Apologizing only goes so far when you make a mistake of this magnitude AND the chinchillas look as they do in those pictures. Baths are a basic part of chinchilla care as well as pellets, hay and water. Those chinchillas do not look like they've received the proper amount of any of those essentials. If you need to "downsize" in order to provide that for your chinchillas, you need to rethink owning chinchillas in general. I own over 70 and none have EVER looked like that unless they came from a neglecting home. My breeding animals NEVER look greasy and only females with extremely large litters have ever appeared "thin".
:neener:
