Weight Chart

Chinchilla & Hedgehog Pet Forum

Help Support Chinchilla & Hedgehog Pet Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

cre8ivmind

Member
Joined
Sep 13, 2015
Messages
15
Location
Terrell, TX
Hi, I'd like to know if any of you find this chart to be useful or interesting. I weigh my chinchillas every week in order to detect pregnancy. I weigh my males too for comparative purposes. My females are Kiyari, Taruka, and Chaska. My males are Aldo and Xeldon. Aldo is the son of Xeldon; and I no longer have Aldo's mother. I know that Xeldon had mated with Chaska on June 24. Aldo mated with Taruka on an unknown date, but I suspect it was sometime in early August. Kiyari seems to be avoiding Aldo's mating attempts; perhaps because she's too much bigger than him. Any thoughts? :hmm:
 

Attachments

  • ChinWeights.jpg
    ChinWeights.jpg
    21.5 KB · Views: 67
Since each female is different (and the boys, too) your individual chart is not much of a help to others. they need to keep track of their own chinchillas weights and watch them over time. Even then, you may not see anything noticeable on the chart. some female gain very little and can drop 2 - 4 babies while others get huge and only have one. I, too, track all of my chinchillas weights. I have noticed that for most females you will see the weight being to increase around the end of the second month after mating. You female that you have not seen mating may just not have done so while you were in the room. I have several that I have never seen mating but they pop out babies anyway.
 
First, great job on weight tracking. It's something I do but not in an electronic manner. That said, as mentioned, that information will mostly be useful to you for your health/pregnancy tracking purposes. I would take note of overall weight gained and size of litter as that information could be compiled to help others BUT that would only be if those chinchillas began at a definite adult weight?

Finally, and do not take this the wrong way, but the two chins in the lowest weight range should NOT be bred. I believe they are both males, which is less risky than if they were females...however passing on genetics for poor size will eventually lead to problems. Those two animals, if at their adult weight, are VERY small for breeding purposes.
 
Ideal weights

Yes, the two on the bottom of the chart are males. What is your general opinion of the minimum weight of a chin for breeding? Knowing that females are larger, I expect the minimum for a female to be higher than that of a male.
 
Last edited:
I would not breed a male whose adult weight was less than 575g or an adult female whose adult weight was below 650g. Those would be absolute minimums, with all other qualities being stellar. Most of my animals, even my males, range way above that. My smallest females being around 675/700g and my smallest males being around 650g. My largest females being close to 1000g and my largest males being around 850g.
 
My four "Standard" breeding males weights are : 978, 780, 738 and 621 grams.

Anything below 600 for a male (IMO) is a waste of space and time. No matter how well he held up at the shows or what big girls I would put them to. The average tells me that your going to have small offspring here and there or each breeding. Keep in mind my 621 gram male above is built like a brick and super dense.

Females need very dense spot on color, thick in the neck and fur veiling coverage as best as you can afford. Lightest weight on one of my females is 767. My petite ebony.
 
Wow, 978 is a pretty big male. Am I right in assuming females breeding with him are even bigger than that? I'm also assuming that you sell chins weighing less than 600 for pets only.
 
Two things I wanted to follow up on, while all breeders vary on PERSONAL lowest weights for breeding...MOST will agree that for any breeding animal (in any herd) the lowest that SHOULD be considered for breeding would be 575g for males, and 650g for females. Some breeders don't LIKE breeding below say 650g/700g but it becomes a health risk when they're smaller than 575g/650g.

NOW, to answer your other question, yes...animals that are below those weights as adults are sold as pet only. As with other species, it's considered a major fault and should NOT be bred into the gene pool :)
 
Back
Top