(Sorry for the long post but I think a lot of this needed to be said, and the rest of it I needed to say)
Just to throw in some of my own experience, when I got my first chins they were supposedly a pair of females and were being housed in a small cage that was rusting to pieces. The owners had kept the cage on a table in the kitchen at eye level with their dobermans and had been feeding them chocolate chip cookies for treats. They were not bathed, their food was left for weeks at a time until they had finished off every pellet of the treat-laden food, and they didn't receive regular hay or cage cleanings. When we took them home, they got their first play time ever. Thinking them both to be female at the time, we were shocked to see one of them cleaning HIS private parts and immediately started looking for a way to separate them. We managed to get our hands on another cage and split them up relatively soon, and it wasn't until a week or two later that we were able to sex the second one. To our good fortune, the second one turned out to also be male (I found it hilarious that they missexed not one, but BOTH of their chins). These chins before I got them had been cage mates for two years as well in a fairly small cage (not much larger than the one yours were in) so I figured there would be no issue with allowing them to continue being cage mates. I was wrong.
About a year after I got them, I reached in to give pets and noticed a huge scab on one boy's back. He had been attacked by the other, and after hundreds of dollars in vet bills to be examined, have his wound drained, acquire medication, etc. we brought him home. For the next two weeks after that he needed almost constant care. Three different kinds of medicine had to be administered every 4 hours, and I had to hand feed him every 3 - 4 hours. I was a full time student who worked from home after 8 hour days at school, and after the first week I was spent. During his recovery he was in a separate recovery cage but he would call out to his cage mate all the time. Despite being attacked, he still wanted to be with him. I eventually put the cages side by side, and after a full recovery had been made I reintroduced them. Things went fine, and they ended up being cage mates again. I thought "Good. I'm glad that's over." and assumed it wouldn't happen again because the intros went so well. Again, wrong.
Another year later I moved the boys into the recovery cage for a few days to keep them out of the way and out of the fumes while I painted. A couple of days into it, however, my calm boy did again start hiding in the corner. This time he had bitten again in almost the exact same place and we went immediately to the vet for it to be cleaned, and to get antibiotics, probiotics, pain meds, and critical care. My 4-hourly ritual began again except that his recovery took place in a small carrier. His appetite plummeted quickly between the Baytril and the stress of being confined. We hand fed more and more to compensate and were nearing the horizon of his treatment. Within the last two days of his treatment, I let him down on the bathroom floor for play time after his critical care as usual but he wouldn't run around. I scooped him up, felt his tummy, and sure enough he was bloated.
Long story short on this, his bloat only got worse and no amount of days taken off of work and school, or money for vet visits, or tummy massages or simethicone or motility drugs saved him. I lost my boy Nibbler last summer because I was dumb enough to expect chinchillas to be reasonable. They are NOT reasonable; they are animals. My boys lived together for at least 3 years before anything went wrong, and when it did go wrong I decided to learn nothing from it. It cost him his life.
My point is this:
I safely transitioned those boys into healthy living conditions and onto healthy diets with the help of the members of this forum. Without them I would not have known how to make those transitions and likely would have seriously jeopardized their health (imagine the impact on their GI tracts to go from chocolate chips to only hay). These members are the ones who sexed my chins and who sent me a cage to separate them when their genders were undetermined. I acknowledged that I was too new at this to deal with kits, they understood and agreed, and helped me in all ways they knew how.
These members talked me through the vet visits for the first bite wound, the treatment period, and recovery. It was AGAINST their advice that I put Nibbler back in with Brock.
Despite not listening to them, these members still provided me with support when Nibbler was bitten again, and they talked me through not only the treatments for the bite wound again but the bloat that followed.
They gave me instructions when I was unsure, support when I was afraid, honest opinions when I was stupid, and compassion when I failed. All of that despite the fact that I was 16 and 17 at the time and obviously making stupid 16 - 17 year old decisions.
Their advice is the best out there. Intentionally disregarding it is the stupidest thing you could do. It's true, they're here for your chins and not necessarily for you. But that is why they're so good. You are trying to do what's best for your chins, and so are they. They have more experience, so let them tell you a bit about it and learn by following in their footsteps and taking their advice.
Moving on from story time...
As far as your situation here, I hope that things go very well for you and your new chin family. I am glad you decided against the trio because it does seem fairly irresponsible to try. I think you also need to be sure that you're prepared for things to go horribly wrong between the two boys you've just taken in. Don't expect that things will go badly, but definitely be prepared just in case. It's the same situation as with mine, and look how that ended up. Keep them fed well, watered well, spoiled well, and if they fight or get sick do what needs to be done and not necessarily what is easy. In all ways, keep learning and improving.
There is something I need to get off my chest real quickly and that's how you were responding to the possibility that the beige was a pregnant female; your knee-jerk reaction should have been to separate them immediately. Not tomorrow or later in the afternoon or an hour from now, but immediately. Breeding is more or less instantaneous and if you were serious at all about not having kits (because like it or not, you are NOT ready) you would not take that kind of risk. It's a moot point now because your beige is in fact male, but reevaluating your response to that situation would be a good exercise I think if for no other reason than to realize that breeding would not have been in the chin's best interest, let alone yours.
However harsh this post may sound, and however many of the other members will glare at me for saying so, I can't help but be glad that you took these guys in. They may not have been in as horrible a state as my boys and other chins I've helped rescue in the past few years, but you at least have the potential to provide them with a much better home than the one they were at. This is conditional, however. If you refuse to continue learning about and improving upon the level of care they require then they're just as bad off with you as with the 7 year old who had them more or less inside a shoe box. No size of cage or amount of toys can compensate for an owner's neglect and irresponsibility. I learned that the heard way, and I hope for your sake and the sake of your chins that you take that as seriously as you should and spare yourself the heartache of learning it on your own. Good luck,
Jesse, Brock, Muad'Dib, and Nibby in spirit.
