Weight and Age

[mrodimer]

So I'm well aware that there really is no way to tell the age of a chin without a DOB or some background on the parents or whatnot. I'm curious as to whether or not its possible to give an estimate based on weight? I know full grown chins can vary hugely in weight but I thought I'd give it a shot. Meeka was about 370g a week or two ago and she's just under 400g now. She did just finish up her baytrin prescription but she ate pretty consistently throughout.

Her diet hasn't changed much since i got her, Oxbow Deluxe pellets and endless timothy with a handful of orchard grass every so often.

I understand this is probably not going to help me figure out how old she is, I'm just super curious and I'll never know!

 

[lauralynne]

Nope. It won't help. Some adult chins weight 400g and some way 1000g. Sorry!

 

[igotfatchins]

I bought a new chinchilla a few weeks ago and he weighed in at 300g at 2.5 months. I also have two other males that average out to be 550g both at 9 months. Unfortunately, these are all the datapoints I have because I only recently started taking their weights.

So if you fit a linear regression unto this: y= 38.5x+203.8, where y=body weight and x=age.
Plug in your chin's weight of 400g into y, this gives you an x (approximate age) of 5.1 months.

Of course, this is based on my 3 male chinchillas. I'm sure there is a correlation between age and body weight, but I don't think many people have taken the time to measure hundreds of chinchilla weights to find it.

So I guess the age to be 5 months. Hope this helps.

 

[GorillaJTA]

I bought a new chinchilla a few weeks ago and he weighed in at 300g at 2.5 months. I also have two other males that average out to be 550g both at 9 months. Unfortunately, these are all the datapoints I have because I only recently started taking their weights.

So if you fit a linear regression unto this: y= 38.5x+203.8, where y=body weight and x=age.
Plug in your chin's weight of 400g into y, this gives you an x (approximate age) of 5.1 months.

Of course, this is based on my 3 male chinchillas. I'm sure there is a correlation between age and body weight, but I don't think many people have taken the time to measure hundreds of chinchilla weights to find it.

So I guess the age to be 5 months. Hope this helps.

No. There is no correlation without genetics and background. One of my chins was 490 g at over a year old and the other one is only a couple months older and is almost 700 g.
There is no simple linear (or even polynomiall) regression that can equate age to weight.

 

[mrodimer]

Alright thanks, i didn't think it would help but figured it was worth a shot. I was told she was between 6 and 8 months but I don't know that they had any idea and I've had her for 2 and a half months... so I'm going to let her celebrate her birthdays on the anniversary of me taking her in lol :HBwhistle:

 

[GorillaJTA]

That is what I did. I just remembered the day I brought Flea home and give him an extra treat that day.