AZChins
Pro Cage Cleaner Champion
Lately I have heard many people in emails, online, in person and in phone calls that they have chinchillas that they put together because either they believe or were told that the animals were too old to breed. It's true that most older females (starting somewhere around 8 or 9 years old) may slow down considerably or may stop having kits altogether. However, this does not mean that there is not a chance that they can get pregnant and deliver kits in the future. Chances are that younger chins are more fertile, but the older girls may still have some eggs left!
I hope that everyone will stop saying that it's alright to put older females in with males because they won't breed. There can be risks involved to the lives of these females because 1) they may not be able to pass a kit...just because they are older doesn't mean that they physically can deliver without issues, and 2) they are older and there may end up being a greater likelihood that the pregnancy could cause problems simply because they won't bounce back like a younger female would. (With that I am not talking about breeding females that have been evaluated by a knowledgeable breeder or rancher, I mean any old female that someone finds on Craig's list or as a rescue, etc.)
It seems that a lot of people like to say, "It would be nice to have babies, but that's not the most important thing. We wanted a friend for our boy!" That can be difficult for me because I'm face to face with someone saying that and the person just doesn't know better. Not that ignorance is a good excuse, but they hear from someone at the petstore one thing and another from the person they bought a chin from in the past and that's all the information that they are going on until they are corrected. They don't know that there can be horrible problems even if everything is done correctly from the beginning.
Please understand...just because a female chin is 10 to 20 years old it does not mean that she no longer has the ability to produce kits. It's more unlikely that they will have babies, but it isn't out of the realm of possibilities.
(Yesterday I had a nearly 11 year old female have a really beautiful baby after over 5 years of not having any babies. I have babies of hers that are 6 to 8 years old right now! It was surprising that she would have a baby, but it wasn't a complete shock.)
I hope that everyone will stop saying that it's alright to put older females in with males because they won't breed. There can be risks involved to the lives of these females because 1) they may not be able to pass a kit...just because they are older doesn't mean that they physically can deliver without issues, and 2) they are older and there may end up being a greater likelihood that the pregnancy could cause problems simply because they won't bounce back like a younger female would. (With that I am not talking about breeding females that have been evaluated by a knowledgeable breeder or rancher, I mean any old female that someone finds on Craig's list or as a rescue, etc.)
It seems that a lot of people like to say, "It would be nice to have babies, but that's not the most important thing. We wanted a friend for our boy!" That can be difficult for me because I'm face to face with someone saying that and the person just doesn't know better. Not that ignorance is a good excuse, but they hear from someone at the petstore one thing and another from the person they bought a chin from in the past and that's all the information that they are going on until they are corrected. They don't know that there can be horrible problems even if everything is done correctly from the beginning.
Please understand...just because a female chin is 10 to 20 years old it does not mean that she no longer has the ability to produce kits. It's more unlikely that they will have babies, but it isn't out of the realm of possibilities.
(Yesterday I had a nearly 11 year old female have a really beautiful baby after over 5 years of not having any babies. I have babies of hers that are 6 to 8 years old right now! It was surprising that she would have a baby, but it wasn't a complete shock.)
