Posted by Jennifer Snyder on Sun, Jan 29, 2012 @ 05:51 PM
Hello chinchilla friends. Today we picked up Zen and Cloud two beautiful male chinchillas from Woburn, MA. Their family recently had twins and want to ensure that their beloved chinchillas go to a new forever home that can give them the love, care and attention they are accustomed to. Their family was generous enough to donate an extra cage and several supplies to our chinchilla rescue effots. Zen and Cloud had fun today at the rescue playing in the new chinchilla play room and are ready to go to a new forever home as soon as the right family comes along.
Zen (the black velvet born on 10/22/2005 bred by Kecia Santerre in NH). The other pictured above is named "Cloud" and he is a violet born on 11/05/2005 bred by Alan Andler of Chinchillas RI. These adorable chinchillas have been cage mates with the same owner since they were kits and will be adopted as a pair and have several nice supplies (including an amazing cage and wheel) that will be going with them to their new forever home. They both have excellent temperament, get along well with each other and other chinchillas, no health issues, and are beautifully colored. We are looking for a forever home with experienced chinchilla owners, or a family that has done a ton of research on chinchilla ownership. Please click below if you are interested in filling out an application for adoption, or feel free to post questions below.
Posted by Jennifer Snyder on Wed, Jan 11, 2012 @ 07:00 PM
Here are a list of questions we ask before choosing a forever home for our rescue chinchillas. Is there anything else you think we should add? Please comment below!
The purpose of this is to let us get to know you and how much you know about chins. Please answer all questions as thoroughly as possible. The more information you give me, the more help I can give you! If you don't know an answer, just say so. I'm always willing to help others learn more about chins.
Questions 11-14 are particularly important. Take your time to answers these as completely as you can. Doing so will allow me to help you make the right decisions from the start and possibly save you money in the long run!
- Where are you located? *We do not ship chinchillas*
- Why do you want a chinchilla?
- Are you under the age of 16? If yes, what role will your parents play in caring for a chinchilla? Are your parents willing to speak with me on the phone at an arranged time?
- Who will be the primary caretaker of the chinchilla?
- Do you have small children that live with you or visit frequently? If yes, will they be supervised when near the chinchilla?
- Are you an experienced chinchilla owner? Do currently have chinchillas, or have you had chinchillas in the past? If yes, please give details (i.e. years owned, number of chins, reason for giving them up, etc).
- Do you breed or plan on breeding chinchillas?
- Do you have other pets? If so, what species they are and will they have access to the chinchilla?
- How much time do you plan on spending with your chinchilla on a daily basis?
- Are you prepared to provide care and love to a chinchilla for the next 12-20 years or more?
- Have you found a vet who knows about chinchillas in your area?
- Do you have a cage for your chinchilla? If yes, describe it. If no, what are your plans for obtaining one? (There are several great options.)
- What does an appropriate diet for chinchillas consist of?
- Please describe what type/brand of food, bedding, toys, etc. you plan on using. Where will you purchase these items? Please be as specific as possible when describing the diet you intend to feed your chinchilla.
- What temperatures should chinchillas live in?
- What are some acceptable treats to give a chinchilla? How often and in what quantity should they be given?
- How often should a chinchilla's water be changed?
- How frequently should a chinchilla's cage be cleaned (minimum)?
- How do chinchillas bathe? How often and for how long should they be given a bath?
- Where do chinchillas originate? (People ask, so it's good to know;)
Thank you!
Posted by Jennifer Snyder on Sun, Dec 11, 2011 @ 10:57 AM
Happy Holidays from your friends at Chinchilla Place. We recently bought a beautiful new home with a large dry basement, so we are now better equipped to help with more chinchilla Rescues! Yay! This December we have two lovely rescue chinchillas that are sharing our new home with us. Misty and Mistletoe. These sweeties are beige chinchillas from Boston (one pictured below). They have had at least two previous college student owners and are two of the sweetest most people friendly rescues I we have had the pleasure of meeting. They love to cuddle up with each other and are also friendly to other chinchillas and people. Today I introduced them to my girl Kirby who can be a bit fussy with introductions, and she loved them both and they loved her! If you know anyone who is looking for a great chinchilla let us know as we now regularly have rescues available. Happy Holiday Wishes for you, your family and your furry friends.
Posted by Jennifer Snyder on Thu, Oct 27, 2011 @ 11:38 AM
Does your chinchilla have freckles, or have you notices brown spots appearing on your chins ears? Several chinchilla owners become conserned when they notice changes in the appearence of their chins. It's great to pay close attention to changes in your chinchillas appearence, stool, eating habits and personality to ensure a happy healthy chinchilla, but the good news on freckles is that they are a normal occurance in chinchillas. Especially as a chinchilla ages. Freckles are very common in color mutation chinchillas (such as white and beige) and occur and multiply as a chinchilla ages.
They are usually most noticable on the ears of your chinchilla, but more than likely, your chin has them all over her body, but with their dense fur it is difficult to tell. These "freckles" are likely just a sign of your chinchilla aging and not anything to be alarmed about. Spots or freckles are not something you typically see in chinchilla kits, but they are something you will begin to notice as your chinchilla ages. Just as peoples skin ages, your chinchillas skin will age too. So if your chinchilla is 4 years old or older you may begin to see these freckles or age spots start to appear around their ears and multiply as they get older. Freckles are likely nothing to fear, but if the area around the freckle seems red, or irritated, you may want to have a quick vet check to ease your worries.
Posted by Jennifer Snyder on Sat, Apr 30, 2011 @ 10:14 AM
Recently I have received a flood of emails and calls from people trying to re home their chinchillas. There are so many chinchillas in need of new homes that I have decided to hold off on breeder and cut down my herd.
We will be focusing on placing chinchillas in great new homes and not on breeding for the forseeable future. We recently had 4 kits born, 2 of them are on hold, but two are still available. Since we are going to focus our efforts on rescue I will also be selling several of my chinchillas with their cages, water bottles and equipment. I plan on keeping a few cages to better assist with the rescue efforts and give chinchillas in need a foster home while we look for their permanent home. I have a list of the available chinchillas here if you are interested in adopting a beautiful new chinchilla feel free to fill out the adoption form on the link above. Thank you for all of your support, I feel like this is the right course of action to best help chinchillas in need.
Posted by Jennifer Snyder on Fri, Feb 18, 2011 @ 05:24 PM
Chinchilla T Shirt sales have been taking Off recently. Thanks to everyone who hase recently purchased a shirt or other chinchilla item from our chinchilla place store. We really appreciate it! Others must be noting the same success! I came across another version of the NINChilla shirt recently and a chinchillin shirt. It seems like a few other people thought a Ninja chinchilla shirt and chinchillin t-shirt would be cool...what do you guys think? My two are the first 2 images
Chinchillin T-Shirt #1 by Chinchilla Place
NINchilla T-shirt #1 by Chinchilla Place
Chinchillin Shirt #2
NINchilla shirt #2
Posted by Jennifer Snyder on Wed, Jan 05, 2011 @ 03:23 PM
Chinchillas make great pets and have a very long life span. What many people do not realize is that chinchillas can live up to 20 years! For this reason we often have chinchillas in need of new homes. If you buy your daughter or son a chinchilla for Christmas when she is in middle school, you will have to start think about the future. Who will be taking care of the chinchilla when she goes off to college? Unfortunatly many pet stores do not have a wealth of information about chinchilla ownership and owners can be confused when purcahse a "rodent" thinking ,like a hamster, or gerbil, their furry new friend will only be around a short time.
At Chinchilla Place we are dedicated to helping rehome these loving pets. One of my chins is a rescue. She is one of my friendliest chinchillas and has made a great addition to our household. We also have 2 adopted retired racing greyhounds. I find that there are many misconceptions regarding adopting a mature pet. Several people I speak with express fears of bonding with the pet or not being able to train the pet. You hear a saying like, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" and the misconception is that their new pet will not love you, or will be difficult to integrate into your household. From personal experience I can say this is not true. My greyhounds are lovely pets. They have been easy to train and greatly appreciate their new life.
Before adopting a "baby" check around and see if there is a mature pet that could use a loving home. Chinchilla kits and puppies are great, but often require a great deal more work than a mature pet. Giving a pet a second chance at a forever home is a gift that you and your family can be proud of. Please check out our adoption site for information on available rescue chinchillas.
Posted by Jennifer Snyder on Fri, Nov 26, 2010 @ 07:10 PM
We received a sweet update today from Betty's (AKA Bella's) new family. It always makes my day to hear how our adopted chinchillas are doing! Thanks for the letter Sharon.
Jennifer, just had to give you an update on Betty. We were just looking at all your chinchilla pictures and they are all soooo cute!. We renamed Betty, Bella. She has a huge cage with lots of wooden platforms, a hammock, and a fleece covered tunnel. She loves to sleep in the tunnel during the day. We let her out almost every night while I read to the kids. She is very sociable but doesn't like to be held. She jumps on our backs and legs while we read. She especially loves to be rubbed under the chin and around her ears. Even my husband has been known to say that he thinks she is a great pet. We keep catching him by her cage scratching her chin. Thanks so much for an awesome pet as my daughter says. We all love her very much.
Sharon
Posted by Jennifer Snyder on Sun, Oct 31, 2010 @ 08:31 PM
Who said a chinchilla couldn't participate in Halloween festivities?! Make sure you give your chin a special treat today. A rosehip is an excellent way to wish your chinchilla a happy Halloween!
Posted by Jennifer Snyder on Tue, Oct 26, 2010 @ 01:58 PM
As I sit here typing and I am very conflicted. I believe in the necessity for advancement in medicine and understand the need for research, but it is very difficulty for me not to feel empathy as a car full of chinchillas look up at me on their way to a research facility in Boston.
My first instinct was to hand the man I had purchased my bulk feed from a wad of cash and tell him I would take them all, every last fuzzy one of them, but then what? I thought I could put them on my rescue page of the site and surely people would want to keep chinchillas from such a fate. Then what? He would go back to his ranch pick up another batch of chinchillas and drive back to Boston and sell them to the research lab.
Why chinchillas for research? Why not something else? Don't they usually use rats? I started asking myself this questions as the man I bought chinchilla feed off of was asking me for directions to the lab. I told him that I couldn't help him, I didn't want to mislead him...that was the way I put it-- too tempting to send him on a wild goose chase. I knew the answer though. why chinchillas?
What many people do not realize is that chinchillas have the closest hearing range to humans. For the last 20 years, Chinchillas have been used for researching the auditory system, because the chinchilla's range of hearing (20 Hz to 30 kHz) and cochlear size is close to that of a human, and the chinchilla cochlea is fairly easy to access.
On top of the hearing and ear similarities, chinchillas are also easy to maintain, live long life spans, breed easily in captivity, and they are easily trained. With this long list of reasons it's no wonder that chinchillas have moved into the popular category for testing. The research started with Miller in the 1970's and continues today. I starting reading a few research papers, and testing is testing. It is not meant to be a pleasant experience for the animal.
In one paper, "Behavioral hearing Rage of the Chinchilla," by Rickye S Heffner and Henry E. Heffner they describe some of the experiments the chinchillas are subjected to. In one experiment
"Thresholds were determined behaviorally by training the chinchillas to indicate the presence of water by momentarily ceasing to drink from a water spout in order to avoid a mild shock from the spout..."
No one "likeS" the idea of testing on animals, just as no one "likes" the idea of abortion or many other controversial issues out there. Research also indicates that violence to animals leads to violent crimes.
I have many friends who work in research and many of them are vegetarians, own pets and hate that they have to sacrifice the lab animals. One of my close friends even snuck 2 home as pets when the experiment was over! The questions is what are the alternatives? The only way to effectively stop animals from being used as research are to find new ways of testing that give us the same valuable data without subjecting any human or animal to discomfort. At this time I don't have that answer or solution, but there are great organizations out there like Altweb, the Alternatives to Animal Testing Web Site, that are trying to find the answer. Altweb has five practical goals:
- To assist scientists and others seeking to conduct a search for alternatives methods.
- to serve as a CRP—"central reference point"—for alternatives information, publications, databases, calendars, and other resources.
- to support the creation and maintenance of new alternative resources as needed, when no other organization can/will do so
- to promote the use of alternatives resources by publicizing them on the site and through e-mail or other outreach
- to facilitate communication and collaboration among members of the alternatives community, in particular those who work in database or information management.
I am hoping that one day we can move away from animal testing and research and I am happy that organizations are out there looking for alternative solutions. But what do you think?