We know you love your chinchillas - they bring us so much joy!  But do you ever wonder if you are giving them everything they need?  While certainly not an exhausetive checklist, here are three quick areas that you can evaluate about your chinchilla's health right from home.  How does your chin's health rank?

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Check the Teeth

No, your chinchilla doesn't need Crest White Strips - for them, it's the oranger the better!  The orange enamel is indicative of sufficient calcium levels which is important for the health of your chinchilla.  If you notice your chin has white teeth, consult your vet right away for advice on calcium supplementation.  To ensure your chinchilla is receiving adequate amounts of these important minerals, as well as the essential amino acids, a balanced diet is key.  The food I recommend is Mazuri Chinchilla Pellets for a carefully balanced diet.  You can review the nutritional facts here: http://www.lonestarchinchilla.com/mazuri.html .  You can also visit http://www.mazuri.com/ to read about why each of these nutrients are so important!

Photo from Eyes of Texas Chinchillas

Not only is the color of their teeth an indicator of health, but also the size.  Chinchillas possess continuously growing incisors and molars and therefore require them to be grinded down constantly.  Fortunately, this is something your pet will do on his or her own, so long as you provide the appropriate resources.  First, if you are feeding your chinchillas with coarse pellets, such as the Mazuri diet, they will grind down the pellets as they consume them, helping maintain proper dentition at the same time.  Chinchillas will also employ this grinding behavior with their hay.  And of course, the ever popular chew toy is a handy tool.  Pumice stones, shown below, and wood chews serve a similar function.  Visit the "What chew talkin' about?" link on the Chinchilla Place homepage to review which species of woods are safe for chinchillas.  Remember, not everything sold in the pet store is safe for these exotic animals, even some marketed specifically for chinchillas.  If you currently provide pumice stones to your chin and it seems as though he or she has lost interest in it, it may be because he has chewed the edges and has trouble fitting his jaw around the remaining chunk.  Try cutting the stone in half to create new edges to chew.

Photo from Forchinate Chins

If your notice the level of food in your chinchilla's food dish has not gone down in a while, he or she may be suffering from a malocclusion.  This means that the teeth have become overgrown, preventing the animal from eating.  This is a serious problem, but usually can be corrected by your veterinarian if the problem is detected soon enough.  The "What chew talkin' about?" link lists more information about malocclusion which is important for every chinchilla owner to be aware of.

Check the Feet

Having cold feet is a good thing!  Maybe not at the altar, but for these little guys, it is a sign that they are regulating their body heat appropriately.  If you notice your chinchilla's feet becoming hotter, this is a sign that he or she is overheated and you should take measures immediately to cool them and their environment.  If the room temperature exceeds 75 degrees F, brain damage can occur and death will most likely ensue.  Another sign of overheating is pink ears (and/or feet).  If you suspect your chinchilla is overheating, cool the room right away, offer ice cubes in a bowl, and supervise your pet until his or her condition improves.  If the chinchilla is lying on their side, appears to have labored breathing, is convulsing, is unresponsive, or limp upon being held, CONTACT YOUR VETERINARIAN IMMEDIATELY.  This is a sign of heat stroke and if not treated right away, it will almost certainly be fatal to the animal.  The best way to prevent overheating in your chinchillas is to keep them in an air conditioned area in the Summer (this is an absolute necessity), equip their cage with a small marble or granite slab on which the chinchilla can sit to cool off, and do not position the cage in direct sunlight.  Also, be mindful that, if you are cooling the room with fans, not to have the cage in the direct path of the blowing fan.

Check the Fur

Perhaps their most notable characteristic, healthy chinchillas have the ability to grow and maintain a soft, full coat of fur, but occasionally you may notice patches of shortened fur that continually appear in various places on the chinchillas body, most commonly the hips.  Get the Chinnie Help Hotline on the phone because this patching is the result of fur biting, which means you may have an anxious or depressed chinchilla on your hands.  It was once thought that the actual behavior of fur biting, by which the animal bites of his own fur sometimes right down to the skin, was a genetic trait, meaning if the chin's parents were fur biters, the chin too would be.  However, it is now better understood that fur biting is a direct neurotic response to to a stress stimulus in the environment.  The hereditary contribution has been only linked to the temperament of the animal, meaning if mom and dad were high-strung, so will be their offspring and when said offspring are exposed to stressful conditions they are liable to fur bite.

So does fur biting harm the chinchilla?  Perhaps not the act of biting the fur itself, unless it is leaving skin exposed and irritated, but the major red flag in these situations is that there is something in the animal's environment that is upsetting them.  Fur biting is, in a sense, a form of self-mutilation and is their way of telling you they aren't happy.  The way to resolve a fur-biting problem is to remove the stressful stimulus.  It may be another pet, such as a dog or cat that frequents the cage and intimidates your chinchilla, it may be the chin's cage mate, it may be a small child, or loud noises, or insufficient diet, or it may even be lack of attention.  That's right - some chinchillas fur bite out of boredom.  Ensure that the immediate area of your chinchilla's cage is protected from these threats to reduce the stress factor.  If available, keep your chinchilla's cage in low-traffic area, such as a spare room or office, where you can prevent other pets from approaching the cage and harassing the caged animal.  In most instances, the fur will grow back and the biting will cease when the animal feels comfortable again.  If your chinchilla has chewed its fur to the point that skin is exposed, contact your veterinarian.  Without fur, chinchillas are limited in their ability to regulate their body temperature and you may need to take extra measures to accommodate for this deficit.

*** It is important that you research veterinarians who have experience with and extensive knowledge of chinchillas.  Because they are exotic pets, they require specialists when they need medical attention.  Be sure to locate a veterinarian as soon as (or before!) you get your chinchilla so you are prepared in an urgent situation. ***

Hopefully your prized pets measure up in all of these areas, and if not, you now have the facts to contact your vet and provide the best care possible for these sweet little critters!  Evaluate these areas on a weekly basis, and for the feet temperature, check daily.

As you probably know, the chinchilla is a unique member of the rodent family.  What you may not know, however, is that it is 1 of only 5 species of the 1700 species of rodents that not only possess a strong set of continuously growing incisor teeth but ALSO with continuously growing molars and premolars.  This means that chinchillas must regularly chew and gnaw to file down these teeth throughout their lifetimes to avoid hazardous health problems like malocclusions - a condition in which the teeth are not properly worn down causing overgrowth, or in some cases teeth actually grow together, preventing the animal from eating regularly and resulting in painful dental disease, starvation, and ultimately, death.  Signs of a malocclusion include weight loss, anorexia, drooling (or the so-called "slobbers", indicated by wet chin fur), coarse matter in the stool, incisor overgrowth (long front teeth), facial abscesses, exophthalmos (bulging eye), or ocular (eye) discharge.  **If you notice any of these signs in your chinchilla, please contact an exotic pet veterinary specialist immediately**. 

In the wild, chinchillas prevent malocclusions by eating coarse, fibrous grasses, tree bark, and herbs that aid in grinding down the teeth.  In your home, your chinchilla relies on you to supply materials for this purpose.  While a healthy, low-fat, coarse pellet diet, like Mazuri, will help your pet maintain proper dentition, additional items, such as leafy timothy hay, hay cubes, pumice stones, and twigs are also important supplements.  If you notice your chinchilla is biting the cage bars, this is a common indication that he is not receiving adequate materials for filing his or her teeth and you should address that problem right away (especially if the cage bars have any coating or paint on them, which chinchillas should not ingest!)

Today I want to focus on a simple and common method chinchilla owners use to prevent malocclusion- chew sticks.  While many pet supply manufacturers market wood chew toys for chinchillas, sadly some don't do their research and are providing wood from a variety of tree species that is toxic to chinchillas.  So before buying sticks at the pet store or online, check the packaging for the type of wood to ensure it is on the following "Safe Wood Species" list:

Safe Wood Species for Chinchillas:  apple, arbutus, ash, aspen, bamboo, blackberry, cholla, cottonwood, crabapple, dogwood, elm, gooseberry*, grapevine, hawthorn, hazelnut, loquat, magnolia, Manzanita, medlar, mulberry, pear, pecan, kiln-dried white pine, poplar, quince, rowanberry, rose hip, strawberry, and willow

Toxic Wood Species for Chinchillas:  almond, apricot, beech, birch, black locust, black lotus, box elder, cedar, cherry, chestnut, china berry, citrus woods (like orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit), cypress, elderberry, eucalyptus, fir, hemlock, juniper, laurel, maple, myrtle, nectarine, oak, oleander, peach, fresh or pressure-treated or red pine, pinecones, plum, prune, redwood, spruce, walnut, yew, or any man made boards such as cardboard, fiberboard, or plywood

*Gooseberry is the wood commonly seen in Super Pet "Branch Bites".  While my sources say that this variety of wood is not necessarily harmful to chinchillas, it does tend to splinter and fragment as the chinchilla chews the bark and I would advise choosing a more dense wood, such as apple, to reduce the possibility that the chinchilla consumes one of these small fragments.

Many of the woods on the toxic species list are members of the prunus family and are so categorized because of the poisonous hydrogen cyanide they release.  In particular, I frequently come across peach wood chews advertised for chinchillas.  Do not be fooled - these are absolutely toxic to chinchillas!

In my experience, I have not had much success locating safe woods for Tango in my local pet stores.  For this reason, I have prepared apple wood chews at home using the instructions below.

Preparing Wood Chews:

1.  Ensure that the wood you are about to prepare is listed on the "Safe Wood Species for Chinchillas" list.

2.  Be certain that the tree from which you are about to cut from has never been sprayed by pesticides, fungicides, or other chemicals either directly or indirectly from nearby fields.

3.  Begin gathering wood using clean pruning shears (as not to strip the bark), selecting live twigs off the tree that are about pencil-width and cut them off in about 4-inch pieces.

4.  Once you have collected several sticks, soak the twigs in a tub of hot water and use a scrub brush to thoroughly clean each stick. After scrubbing, leave the wood in the tub until the surrounding water feels cool, swirling the sticks in the water periodically. As the (harmless) tannins are released from the wood, the water will turn an orange color.

5.  Dump the water and repeat the soaking process in step 4 again.

6.  Dump the water, rinse the sticks, and lay them out on old, clean towels to air dry. The next steps will require the use of an oven for an extended period of time, so do plan in advance.

7.  Once the sticks are dry, and while the oven is still cool (do not pre-heat), lay a double layer of aluminum foil over your oven racks (rather than a baking sheet) and spread the dried sticks on the foil.

8.  Set the oven to its lowest temperature, usually around 170 or 180 degrees F. Wait for the oven to reach that temperature, then turn it off again and let it cool while the sticks remain inside (refrain from opening the oven). It is important to remain near the oven during this process because chinchillas will reject the wood if it becomes burned.

9.  Repeat the baking process (step 8) 4-5 times or until the sticks are very dry. When a stick is sufficiently baked, it will snap fairly easily (like a dead twig would) when you try to break it.

10.  Allow sticks to completely cool before giving one to your pet.

 Left: Baked apple sticks; right: chewed apple stick

I supply the sticks one at a time and discard them once the bark has been chewed off.  For Tango, this usually equates to stick per day.  Administer sticks as often as they are chewed!  Since this, of course, is not the most energy efficient preparation process and it will likely fill the house with a strong aroma, you will want to prepare many sticks as possible in the same cycle and probably not right before you plan to have company!

Another option is to purchase these sticks already prepared for you from a knowledgeable online chinchilla supply retailer.  My preferred vendor is Forchinate Chins at this website: http://geocities.com/forchinatechins/chincessories.htm .  Ensure that the supplier is providing a safe wood for chinchillas from the list above and that it comes from a tree that has never been sprayed with chemicals.  This addition to the cage will surely add excitement to your chinchilla's day and it's healthy for him too! 

Happy trails!

Amanda

Since chinchillas are part of the rodent family they will instinctively chew on wood or anything they can get their paws on. It is part of their natural behavior, so it is up to their human friends to keep them from chewing on wires, walls, plastic, or other materials that could be harmful. Though their chewing can be a bit challenging for human friends, it should not be discouraged as chinchillas need to gnaw to keep their teeth healthy and prevent them from growing too long. Rodent's teeth never stop growing so they have to gnaw on things regularly.

There are some instances where chewing is a negative behavior for chinchillas--fur chewing. This behavior is similar to the feather plucking that some pet birds display. Some fur chewing tends to be hereditary, but it can also have environmental influences. If your Chinchilla is distressed, has recently undergone a traumatic move, you have changed the food, she has not had much play time out of the cage, or she is pregnant these are some reasons why your chinchilla may be chewing her fur. Fur chewers will chew their own fur either constantly, or at intervals, re-growing it completely in between. They usually chew the fur off of their hips and sides, and base of the tail about half-way down the length of the hair. It looks very unsightly, but it is usually not harmful to the chinchilla’s physical health. Unfortunately, they will also chew the fur off of other chinchillas and their offspring. If you are thinking of breeding be cautious if your chinchilla displays this behavior, as chewers tend to produce chewers.

Chinchilla chew toys are recommended as a great way to enrich your chinchilla’s environment and keep their teeth healthy. They enjoy wooden small animal chew toys that you can pick up at most pet stores, hanging chew toys, alfalfa blocks, and chinchilla chew toys like lava bites that are made to simulate the chewing materials they would find in their natural habitat in and around the Andes Mountains.