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1

Q & A / Re: Getting new friend(s) for my 14 year old chin.

« on: December 21, 2016, 02:22:45 PM »

Thanks for your advice GrayRodent and BLS Chins. You have given me some nice pointers and things to consider. I never considered him to be the one who might need protection from other chins because he has always seemed so difficult in accepting other chins. Because of both of your advice I will be extra careful and accept it a little easier if it doesn't seem to work. Luckily, he is still looking healthy and really seems to like his new 'stuffed cat friend'. I think we will get a new chin and see how it goes with him and if I don't trust it, the new chin will get a new friend. If they can't be caged together, could they maybe have supervised play time or something? I really want to try introducing a friend because he seems lonely and I want to at least give him the chance of not leading the rest of his life without other chins. That and we miss having a few chins and we have the room anyway.

Don't worry about me spontaneously breeding chins, I was merely considering it and wondered if I should make the afford of looking into this. I know there are lethal alleles and I'm well aware of risks with these sort of genetics since I work at a (plant) breeding company.

2

Q & A / Getting new friend(s) for my 14 year old chin.

« on: December 10, 2016, 08:36:26 AM »

Hello everybody,

Sadly, last Monday my female chinchilla (Basted) died.  She was 12 years old and I am not quite sure what was wrong. She was very weak and just lying on her side and died soon after. I don't think it was anything contagious because my other chinchilla named Ptah seems fine (except that he seems very sad en lonely).

I'm writing this post because of Ptah, he seems sad and lonely. I will keep him alone for a little while to make sure he is not sick but we really want to get some new chins to give him company. He is a 14 year old chinchilla. When he was 2 years old he and his brother started fighting and the previous owner had them both sterilized/castrated. This didn't help and they had to be separated. Ptah was matched to two female chinchilla's (not at the same time but within a few months). I got the three chinchilla's from the previous owner and I have had them now for over 8 years. Two years ago one female died (I think from a heart attack) and a few days ago the other one. Several years ago one of the females was hurt and had to be quarantined for a while and he was very difficult in accepting her when she came back (on neutral ground of course) and only accepted her when the other female had already accepted her. He also wouldn't accept another female (pregnant) when we tried to ad her. This makes me a little bit scared of trying to introduce new chinchillas to him.

Nonetheless we would like to add some new chins. I'm hoping he will be easier now because he is lonely. I liked the group of 3 a lot and maybe 4 would be nice to. I like that they can choose with which chin they want to sleep or play. We have also never had a young Chinchilla so that would be very nice to. I was thinking that females would be better because he has already had some problems with a male. A male and female would be nice to get a baby chin but I'd rather not have to get the male castrated because it seems a dangerous procedure with such stress sensitive small animals. The cage is big and can be separated into two cages if necessary and we could keep two separate couples. So my questions are basically, how long should we wait with adding new chins? Can they be young, and female or also male? Can we ad a few young females or maybe a mother with a baby. Should new chins be added separately or would together be better and if so is it better if they know each other already?

I'm sorry it's a long read and I would greatly appreciate any advice you could give me.

3

Health / Re: do chinchilla's have uvulas?

« on: September 27, 2015, 12:17:43 PM »

I asked the vet to take some x-ray images before the operation to be sure there was no malocclusion or other problems and he said the x-ray looks good, see pictures.
Therefore he has operated and removed the growth. Faithfully she woke up and is now recovering. Today she tried to eat the liquid food herself (without the syringe). Hopefully she will be eating her normal food soon, otherwise we don't know what the problem is at all.

4

Health / Re: do chinchilla's have uvulas?

« on: September 21, 2015, 04:27:43 AM »

Thank you for the response GrayRodent. I used your query and found some informative pictures. I think I will show them to my vet as well. He actually called a dutch university that specializes in exotic animals to confirm that this normally shouldn't be in my chinchilla's mouth. Sadly we do not have any pets that specialize in exotic pets in my area. My vet specializes in rodents and takes care of a lot of teeth problems with rabbits. I know it's not the same but it's the best I could find. I will ask him if he thinks we could do an x-ray.
For the malocclusion in chinchillas, can this occur when they are already older? I would think this would become a problem in early life. She is about 9 years old, I've had her for 7 years and she's never had any problems before.

5

Health / do chinchilla's have uvulas?

« on: September 18, 2015, 12:45:32 AM »

Hello everyone, I'm new here because I have a problem with my Chinchilla and I'm afraid the dutch forum I usually go to takes to long to respond.
A few weeks ago my chinchilla had saliva around it's mouth and therefore we took her to the vet immediately. It turned out that some of her molars had grown wrong and where making wounds in her mouth. The vet took really good care of the molars and gave us some pain killers/antibiotics and liquid food to force feed her.
At home, the force feeding quickly turned to giving her the liquid food which she ate enthusiastically. Sadly after giving her less she didn't start eating her normal food and even raisins take a long time to eat. She only seems able to make her pallets in little piles of powder and doesn't seen able to swallow.
Yesterday we took her back to the vet and he looked again. The wounds are healed and all teeth and molars look fine. The only weird thing he can find is a uvula like piece of soft tissue coming from the top of the soft tissue in her mouth.
My vet isn't sure if this is normal tissue or it might be a tumor or some other kind of tissue that should be removed. Does anybody know if this should be in her mouth?
I don't remember seeing it the first time when he took care of her molars. Our vet is going to look in his books and see if he can fine the answer. I'm really hoping you guys have some experience with this. Otherwise we might have to use our other chinchilla as comparison but then he has to be sedated asswell.