Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Beardysteve1]

My new chinchilla Misty is not using the little nest house that we have bought for her. It's a wooden box that we hoped she would use to sleep but she has so far only used it as a toilet. Instead of sleeping in the box or under a ledge or anywhere sheltered, she always sleeps on top of a ledge exposed. I'm worried about her as I was hoping she would enjoy a little box for privacy.

What do your chinchillas do as regards sleeping? Do they sleep all exposed or in a nest of some kind?

Many thanks!

[GrayRodent]

Your chinchilla is fine and doesn't feel the need to hide which is a positive thing. Some chinchillas prefer to sleep on the shelves and may sleep in different places throughout the day.

[kageri]

Some chinchillas sleep very weird.  I've seen other people post about chinchillas asleep hanging on the bars several inches off the floor of the cage.  Yesterday Keck was sleeping with her back feet on the house and her head sideways on the shelf.  Just hanging there.  My husband tried to get a pic of it but there were too many obstacles in the way to really see.  Katsu sleeps on the platform under the hole between ferret nation cage levels and then later in the afternoon he moves to his clam perch to take a nap.  Zip sleeps under his fleece and I've quit giving him a house because he just tosses it sideways in to a corner to get under his fleece.  They are silly.

[Jasonred79]

Popsicle seems to spend time in any of his 4 "houses" or on his perches, he seems to normally sleep like a horse aka more or less upright with his feet tucked under him. But sometimes he just sprawls on his side with his legs stretched out like a lazy cat or something. (which panicked me a LOT first time I saw it cause I thought he was sick or dead or something bad.)

[GrayRodent]

My first chinchilla used to sleep standing up with his eyes opened. Sometimes I'd reach in there and it would totally freak him out if I touched him not realizing he was asleep. He had a house and a hammock. He never slept in the same place twice but seemed to spend most of his times on a shelf. He was also a very territorial animal, not a very tame chin, and I would have to dump the house over to get him out of the cage. I tried reaching inside but got bit. Those problems went away after I removed the house and made it a point to take him out of the cage and hold him for a few seconds whenever he would hint at being aggressive.
My second chin is territorial in a different way. He is protective of me and tries to drive off other people when they come into the room. He'll bounce off the walls of the cage and kack. He does seem to have a favorite corner and if someone else reaches back there he'll act aggressive and puts on a show but he's so tame he has never bitten anyone. Even when he doesn't like them. And he's not always consistent about who he likes either. It's quite entertaining to watch.

[Jasonred79]

When I first got my chin my ambition was to get him tame enough to sleep next to me. Well, not in my bed itself since I was worried about rolling over and squashing him.
Gave that up since the naughty fella needs supervising to stop him chewing on the wrong thing. Still... MAYBE someday...

at the moment, Popsicle is tame, but super naughty. He LOVES playing tag and hide and seek, and isn't happy when I get tired of chasing him and just read or something while waiting for him to come out of his hidey holes. I've inadvertently trained him that when I open his cage, he "initiates" playtime by having me stick my hand in his cage so he can run up my arm and then zoom past me and hide. If I just open his cage doors and wait, he doesn't really come out, he waits for me to stick my hand in, then does a little pre-game dance and sniff and me tickling him ritual thing, then zoom zoom.

I just bought a harness and leash so I can take him outside for walks, but if he really is this tame, or gets even more tame, I'll let him run around the condo garden free rein. (i did it once before, but with his favourite carry house which he uses as a rodent secret base, he went back in his rodent base once he got bored tired and hot enough... room is AC, outside is 85F)

[GrayRodent]

Chinchillas are very difficult to work with when it comes to conditioning them to be restrained and stay still. It is, from my experience, an impossible task. The best you're going to get is a chinchilla that will stay still and sleep in your arms some times but not others. You should be able to get a chinchilla that tolerates being restrained and craves being petted and scratched. It something that you'll be working on for years and you will have to push for it at times. I'm not sure how successful you'll be at it unless you start that kind of thing when they are very young, like 3-4 months. The older they are the harder it will be.
Harness training is also very difficult. I've said in the past that I do not advise anyone to use a harness on a chinchilla. It doesn't mean I haven't tried it. It means the risk of injury or death to your pet is high if one small thing goes wrong so if you don't know what you're doing Then don't try. I had someone to help me who did know what they were doing and it worked but I'm not saying it's a good idea. In fact it is a bad idea. If your pet gets hurt or dies from this exercise don't say you haven't been warned!
Great care must be taken to ensure the harness is staying where it supposed to be at all times. Also my chinchilla has been trained to be restrained and does not mind being held still. Even at that getting the harness on him can be very difficult. Once it's on he barely tolerates it and tries to chew it off but once he's running around he acts like it's not there.
Unlike cats and dogs chinchillas have much smaller bones which means they are more flexible. On top of that is a huge amount of fur which makes it more unpredictable and quite slippery. Great care must be taken to avoid closing the fur into the clasps of the harness which not only causes great discomfort to the chinchilla but can cause the clasps to slip open. The fur also obscures the clasps and straps making them difficult to locate. These issues make properly adjusting the harness very difficult and even when the harness is properly adjusted the risk of your pet slipping out of it is still there for all those reasons. The type of harness used is also going to be a factor. Some types are inherently unsafe. You need a ferret harness that has a strap around the chest and the belly. It must have a strap going down the back lengthwise and another at the front. I had to modify mine to connect it at the front. I taped down the loose straps after adjusting them. I used colored electrical tape on the clasps to make them more visible because the fur hides them. If anything goes wrong and the straps slip you need to be able to get it off super quick. Have some kind of shears ready to cut it off if you have to. If it slips in certain ways your pets can break its leg bones trying to get free, or choke to death. You need to have it on tighter than what you think you'll need.
In my experience my chinchilla has been able to slip out of his harness sometimes without warning. I would not feel comfortable at all having him outside with it. I don't feel particularly safe having it on inside. Perhaps there is a better harness design but I'm not sure how much better than you're going to get than the customized design that I have. If you want to experiment I strongly recommend that you have someone else there that can help you if something goes wrong.

[Jasonred79]

EEK. Thanks! I'm going to abort the harness plan... thanks for the VERY important warning there!

Edit: I just realised it'd be impossible to get the harness on in any case, going by your experience. Popsicle has NEVER been restrained by me. He's been restrained like once by the vet during the vet visit, but his relationship with me is I scoop him up and then let him stand or rest on my hands, our deal is that he doesn't struggle cause I don't give him any reason to struggle nor do I prevent him from doing so.
Which would make the harness pointless come to think of it, cause the whole point of the harness is to control where he goes, right? And popsicle always goes wherever he wants, more or less.
Spoilt brat champion lol.

[kageri]

Chinchillas have a floating rib cage.  It is not attached.  Pressure on their abdomen could damage internal organs or break a rib.  You can bet at some point they will bolt in to the end of the leash.  The odds of escape make it very unsafe to try outdoors.  I would not take them outdoors outside of a pen with a floor and roof.  They can jump well over 3' without practice and considerably higher with practice.  Aika at least could use the walls of a pen to clear 5' fencing with ease.  She popped right up to the top of a 6' high cage before I got the shelves back in it.

[GrayRodent]

In my experience the effects of my chinchilla reaching the end of the leash were minimal. The design of my harness distributes the forces safely. On the other hand we are talking about a very tame pet chinchilla that does not panic easily. The biggest threat is him going under furniture and getting the leash tangled up or going into an inaccessible place and getting stuck there in his harness. I'm not too concerned about the rib cage because it is quite flexible allowing these animals to flatten themselves out to get through small gaps (down to the height of their skull) safely. Their abdominal organs are also compressible but the way they are compressed makes all the difference. If pressure is concentrated in any one place injury or death can result. Again if you don't know what you are doing it's a stupid thing to do. If you do know what you are doing it's only manageable with the right animal and there are still very real risks. It is not something that I recommend doing at all.

[Jasonred79]

yeah, i'm not going to do the harness.... in fact I suspect part of my motivation was that he'd look cute in it.

At the moment, when I want him to get some fresh air, I let him sit on my shoulder and we take a walk in the park. I thought he might like feeling the grass under his feet, being a wild animal and all that.
But if I don't need my hands free, his normal carrying position is being propped up against my chest a bit like how people carry poodles.

[Beardysteve1]

Thanks for the replies guys. Misty does seem content enough whether her house is in or out of her cage and seems to sleep with eyes half open throughout the day. Building up to our first play date (when I finally get her out of the cage to play in a chinchilla-proofed room). So far she hasn't let us lift her, just walks over our hands or climbs up our forearms sometimes, but have got a little carry case to move her to the next room. She's been cooped up in the cage now for two weeks and I'm looking forward to seeing how she enjoys a bit more space. 

[Jasonred79]

just walks over our hands or climbs up our forearms sometimes, but have got a little carry case to move her to the next room.

Sounds like you got a really friendly one, actually. Might consider accelerating the playdate timetable, if she's comfortable enough to climb up you guys. (it means that while she hasn't reached the level of treating you as buddies, she's no longer scared of you in fact she's pretty comfortable with your presence)

Oh... but her cage is not in her playroom? Maybe a little more warming up then. Ya see, once a chin has familiarised itself with it's cage, it treats it like it's home... it's sanctuary. For popsicle, he's in my bedroom, and if he's outside and he doesn't trust one of my guests, he goes back inside his cage so he feels safe. So... if your chin has spent 2 weeks getting used to her cage, then you take her away from it, she might get anxious.
Or she might not. Sometimes who knows what goes through their rodent brains....

[Beardysteve1]

No I'm afraid I live in a small flat and her cage is in our hallway (the hallway is big and central but there is only a living room / kitchen, a bedroom and a large bathroom on top of that). We spend a lot of time talking to her and make sure she gets attention but if we were to let her play in the hall my landlord would probably murder me (there is so much wood, shelves, skirting boards etc). When I move it will definitely be a priority to find a place with a spare room so I can just open up the cage and let her out whenever she pleases, but as it is at the moment, none of the rooms are really chinchilla proof apart from the Bathroom and I wouldn't want to keep her in there all the time.

[GrayRodent]

When I have my chinchilla out usually I'll sit in my desk chair and let him climb around on me. It took some serious work though to get him to not jump off. Even now it's somewhat unpredictable. He'll jump onto my desk and occasionally jump onto the floor and I have to catch him. After loosing him 1,000 times and getting him back he'll be more likely to stay still. Of course it's not as simple as that because you have to work with him and figure out how chinchillas think and react, what works and what does not, etc. And it helps greatly to have a net to catch him with. I have a fish net on a pole with a fine screen mesh that his feet cannot get tangled in. It has a nice long handle and allows me to chase him out from under furniture. I rarely ever catch him in the net but use it to direct him into the bathroom where he is easy to catch. As long as he's busy trying to evade you the risk of him chewing on anything is minimal.