Potty training

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Norse

Norse

Member
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
16
Location
Eastern Montana
I was wondering how you guys potty trained your chinchillas, Kiwi is a really bad shelf pee-er (?) and I want to remedy that. Thank You
 
Both of my boys did it on their own. I put in the new fleece liners and a litter box with pine shavings in it. Apparently they were used to peeing on the pine shavings because they started using it that day and haven't stopped. I've heard it's much easier to train boys than it is girls.
 
Mine trained themselves as well. As for the shelf peeing, potty training isn't going to help. The only thing you can really do is clean it up and try moving it to a different spot.
 
Have you noticed your chinnie only peeing on one shelf??? My chins pee in one spot...no matter what. I had to set up their cage a certain way with some wire shelves to prevent the shelf peeing. Other wise it's pretty easy. With my guys, I just found where their "one spot" was and had their litter their. Scooped a little bit of wet bedding in there in the beginning and that was that!!!


Good luck!!! And I hope that helped!!! :thumbs:
 
I have "potty trained" my girl to pee (and only pee haha) in a glass pirex dish. I know she loves to pee in the bottom back corner of her cage, so that is where I placed the dish, and presto! Worked from the first day. :D Poop on the other hand is fair game to be thrown everywhere. lol
 
Tink pees in a metal pan filled with litter pellets and soiled aspen bedding. I just put a little of the soiled bedding in with the litter in her favorite pee corner and she got the idea right away.
 
when my girls pee on their shelves, I try to move the shelves around, many times that fixes the problem and they don't pee on it anymore. I've also covered some of the ledges with granit slabs so that it's easier to clean up and doesn't soak into the wood. Otherwise their shelves probably smell like pee so they'll continue to pee on them in that spot.
 
If you do use granite slabs on the shelves to make cleaning the pee up easier, be sure that they are well secure with something like industrial strength velcro. You wouldnt want them to fall off and possibly injure anyone.
 
Only one of my chins is potty trained, and he did it on his own. I had a dish for his hay and he peed in it every day. I got so sick of cleaning it out that I bought him a hay rack, and filled the dish with carefresh. He continued to go in the dish. I wasn't going to complain.:D
 
My cages used to have wire shelves. All of my chins would sit on the shelves and pee. What a mess. Once I changed the shelves to wood, They all started peeing in the litter. I didn't to complain at all.
 
Do most people have a designated "pee area" for their chins? And do you use small animal litter or pine shavings just in that one location? Or are you guys using pine shavings across the whole cage bottom?
Our current cage setup has all wood shelving, with a wire bottom/slide-out pan. We are just using a layer of some recycled newspaper bedding from Petsmart (don't worry, I don't buy much of anything else from there) in the pan and he hasn't peed on any shelves/ledges/fleece since we've had him (about a month).

I guess my question is should I get a little little box thing? Or just leave things how I have it set up?

Thanks!
 
I have aspen bedding covering the bottom of the cage. Tinkerbell usually likes to go in a corner of the cage so I have "stuff" in all corners except one for her to use as a potty. I had a plastic ferret litter pan that she left alone until recently and then began to chew on it. I have since replaced it with a metal pan. I would love a metal litter pan but they seem to be hard to find. To give her the idea that this was where I wanted her to go potty, I put soiled bedding in with the litter. She started using it immediately.
 
I trained mine by putting shavings in a metal baking dish and putting it in their pee spot. After they got the hang of that I switched to fleece liners and been using them ever since.
 
I wish my chins were potty trained. My boys have 3 different areas in the bottom of their cage where they go....well besides going on their shelves (grrr). I tried getting my girls to use just 1 side of their cage by only putting shavings there. One of them decided she didn't like that idea so one night she moved shavings into the other cage area (my cage is 1 large one with a divider that is open so they can go into both sides). I finally gave up trying and let her have her way. LOL
 
I just keep carefresh in a ceramic dish and for the most part they pee in that. I leave the rest of the cage floor bare - its a quality cage chinchilla mansion. The floor is a solid pull out tray. Sometimes they will pee in others areas, but they mostly pee in the ceramic dish. I keep in right under their water bottle, so basically they sit in the dish when they drink.

Once in a while they will pee on the shelves - mainly right where the hay rack is - so I figure while they are munching on hay they are too lazy to be bothered with going to the dish, so they just pee there while they are eating.
 
One of my girls is potty trained (surprisingly it's the one who has the most behavioral problems). She spent most of her time in a wire bottom cage, so when she moved in with me to the top floor of an FN142, she wouldn't pee anywhere but through the wire divider (unfortunately my other chin was curious and was sniffing at her once and got a faceful of wee!). We bought her a litter pan and she is very good about using it. Other posters are right, though: ANYWHERE is a good place to go #2! ;)
 
Tika was sort of hard to train to use a little box. I have a metal cooking pan in her cage filled with aspen shavings. She started out strong picking up that she should use it to pee in as soon as i placed it in her cage. Then after a weeks months she started to have accidents on her fleece liner. It started to get bad, so i pulled out the fleece liner so it is just down to the metal pan and would check for pee spots as often as i could (about ever hour i was up and then once really late) and if there were any pee spots i would spot clean them with some diluted vinegar. She started using the pan again. Now she is still doing good with her pee pan.

As far as shelf peeing i have found that scrubbing them, moving them, or putting a chiller on them has worked with Tika.
 
I would like to potty train my chins, especially because I'm heavily considering switching over to fleece liners. Are metal litter boxes even made? I definitely don't want to put plastic in there and it sounds like most of you guys use a ceramic dish. One of boys doesn't even sit on the edges of his dishes, so I don't know if he would use it.

Also, he eats bedding. And I mean, EATS it. A lot. He is in a cage with a grid bottom because of this. I haven't tried to put bedding in his reach for a long time, but I can see him getting excited because there is a bowl full of yummy bedding for him. Is there any way to overcome this lovely obstacle???
 
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