Timothy hay causing stomach problems?

[squishychinchi]

Hello all, my chinchilla is right now having problems with timothy hay. First when he got watery poo, we pulled all the mazuri pellets and fed him only hay. He didn't seem to get better until we started giving him some shredded wheat and burnt toast. After he got better, we went back to the normal diet of mazuri pellets.
Then we realized that the pellets didn't seem to be the problem. For three days of feeding him pellets only, he was fine. Then the fourth day we gave him some timothy hay.... and that night he got REALLY bad watery poo.
The next day we gave him only pellets without hay, and his poo was soft but not watery....
And the day after that he was pretty much back to normal.

I use Oxbow timothy hay, and I only pick out the green ones for him to eat.

Have anybody heard of digestive problems with timothy hay? I know you are supposed to feed chinchillas timothy hay to grind their teeth as well as different nutrition values. But if my chinchilla is having problems with timothy hay, is there an alternative?

 

[AZChins]

I've heard of chins that haven't been used to being on hay having issues with diarrhea when given timothy hay and have seen it a few times. Do you give him a whole lot of hay all at once? He could be overeating on it and it could be causing a bad reaction because of that.

What I would do is give him just a little at a time and work your way up to a larger amount over a month or more. If he's still having a problem, I guess you could try giving him maybe burmuda grass or orchard grass and see if it makes a difference.

I had some rescues come in a few years ago that had some problems digesting the hay correctly and got some pretty bad diarrhea. Once we deviate from what a chinchilla's digestive system is used to handling we can get diarrhea going.

 

[squishychinchi]

My chinchilla had always been eating hay, so it was weird when the stomach problems started happening. I usually do give him a lot of hay all at once, because I read that chinchillas can't overeat and they will just stop eating when they are full? He does usually finish all his hay at once though. I usually give him enough to fill his hay box loosely.

Is burmuda grass or orchard grass similar to timothy hay? Like.. can they be a substitute if my chinchilla continue having watery poo w/ timothy hay?

 

[Nancy S]

I think you can use orchard grass as a sub for now---it is a grass hay. How is the water bottle---is it cleaned real good-steralized? I had a problem once with a bacteria from water bottle that brought on diarrhea. Clean just in case. Good luck--give lots of water-even if you have to syringe a little extra.

 

[Silverrose]

Perhaps it could also be a bad batch of hay? Maybe try a different bag and see if that stops the problem?

Timothy is hard to come by in this area, so we tried bermudagrass. They ate it, but not as much as I would have liked, so we are now using a timothy/orchard/alfalfa mix. They like it much better and eat more hay.

 

[Sandi]

I would also try replacing the the current bag with a new bag of hay, you can also try hay cubes as well.

 

[mishellyshel]

i would try hay cubes. alfalfa, oxbow botanical mix, and/or a new bag of timothy.

 

[squishychinchi]

Thanks everyone for responding!

The water is switched out every single day and we use filtered water. We clean the bottle everyday when we switch out the water.

I did just get a new batch, we were using Kaytee before but found that a lot of the hay is brown. So we just started on the Oxbow...

I will try and get hay cubes and orchard grass and bermuda hay and see which one he likes and won't have problems with. Thanks!!!!

 

[AZChins]

He won't like the burmuda and orchard grass much at first. Just try a little of each and see what he does. I think it's more of a texture thing than anything else, the burmuda has much smaller leaves and it seems to be a little tougher than the timothy.

I switch between timothy hay and burmuda, the looks I get from those chins are just scary when they get the burmuda after expecting timothy.

Do you think that he could just have eaten too much of the new timothy? Maybe he's just not used to having something that is greener. It could be sweeter hay, maybe it's just different than what he's used to and that's causing the problem.

 

[squishychinchi]

Hi AZChins, I think it is possible he did eat too much of the new timothy. I will try to give him very little first and see what happens. He did seem to like the Oxbow much more than the Kaytee. I will switch to Bermuda or Orchard if he can't even take a little bit of Timothy. Thanks!!!