I had an interesting discussion with one of the exotic vets at the U of I. I was just thinking about it, and thought it would be interesting to post.
Including my girls the vets had seen a total of 8 chinchillas that week. The exotic intern was commenting that all of the chins had a heart murmur of some degree. I don't know the levels of the previous 6 animals, but Lily's was a borderline level 1-2. Lady's was a very low 1, hardly audible from what I was told.
The intern was starting to hypothesize that heart murmurs might be a common genetic occurrence in American bred chinchillas, since they can trace their roots back to a few original animals (14 I believe?). I told the intern that while I wasn't 100% sure on Lady's origins there was a possibility that she had been shipped in from the Netherlands, so she may not be related to American bred chins. The intern just said it was an interesting trend she was starting to notice and we left it at that.
Are heart murmurs common in chinchillas? I thought it would be interesting to see if any of you had any thoughts?
Including my girls the vets had seen a total of 8 chinchillas that week. The exotic intern was commenting that all of the chins had a heart murmur of some degree. I don't know the levels of the previous 6 animals, but Lily's was a borderline level 1-2. Lady's was a very low 1, hardly audible from what I was told.
The intern was starting to hypothesize that heart murmurs might be a common genetic occurrence in American bred chinchillas, since they can trace their roots back to a few original animals (14 I believe?). I told the intern that while I wasn't 100% sure on Lady's origins there was a possibility that she had been shipped in from the Netherlands, so she may not be related to American bred chins. The intern just said it was an interesting trend she was starting to notice and we left it at that.
Are heart murmurs common in chinchillas? I thought it would be interesting to see if any of you had any thoughts?
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