Chinchilla Community Forums
Chinchillas => General Chat => Topic started by: winterose on May 08, 2012, 03:03:15 PM
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So the two chins I was talking about in my thread about if a cage would work or not are here :) One is a mosaic and one is a standard i believe, he looks to dark to be a standard but is to light to be a ebony? i think thats the one im thinking of... so I think she is just a darker colored standard.
its kinda sad they came with hardly anything. No hammocks, no toys, one chew block and a wooden house...
crap for food, and chin dust but no dust house.... good thing im crafty with the sewing machine to at least get some comfy hammocks and cubes in there for them
Also a hudge bag of pine shavings.... :( now if they are anything like hamster/rats/mice then pine is bad for them.... so off to get new food and bedding i go...
Here is a pic.
(http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/554308_10150798008968284_524488283_9776180_2053089999_n.jpg)
Also how long would a 25lb bag of food last with 2 chins? for some reason out by me they only sell the good chin foods in bulk bags.... and could I keep the food fresh for how ever long it would last? if so how?
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well i think they are lucky you found them..
i cant say for sure how long it will last, but it will last a very long time. keep it in a cool, air tight place. food is usually good between 6-9 mos depending on the brand, from the mill date.
jean
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Congrats on your new pets.
If they have not been fed a good diet and have not been given hay you might want to take them in for a vet checkup and have their teeth examined. They can do well without pellets but not without hay.
In case you are not aware it is best practice to mix in any new pellets with old ones and gradually change their diet over 2 weeks to prevent potentially life-threatening digestive problems. Monitor their droppings daily for changes. That is just good practice regardless. Chances are the stress from the move is going to affect them so you can expect to see some abnormality in diet and droppings over the next few days. Just make sure you don't run into problems with constipation, diarrhea, or anorexia that lasts for more than a day or two which seems be common when relocating.
Although pine is generally considered to be harmful kiln dried pine chips are widely used without ill effects and may be preferable to most alternatives.
The standard could be a black velvet too. Can't see him too well in the picture though. Is this a male-female pair? How long have they been together?
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thanks guys :)
They have been given Timothy hay, at least they came with an open bag so I assume they have, and I shall transition slowly and watch for anything bad. Mazuri is a good chin food yes?
Im just going to donate the shavings bag to my local rescue farm, they are always in need of it for the horses and stuff. then I shall be off to find a nice bedding option for hopefully not to to much. I drained my college text book savings to save them. shhh don't tell any one :P
I shall take some more pictures today and post them for you guys and maybe you can help me figure out what color it is. They are suppose to both be girls and as far as I can tell via looking up sexing pictures they should be, but in any case, both their bits look the same so at least there won't be procreating.
Supposedly they are a sister pair gotten from a pet shop that breeds their own.... and supposedly they are only 4 months old. Im taking everything they told me with caution. tho their feet seem a little disproportionate to their bodies so im assuming they are still on the younger side in any case. not wildly so, but they are more pronounced then any any older chin I have ever seen
They are very docile from what I am use to dealing with chinchillas in the past. so at least someone has handled them enough so they don't freak out.
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PICTURES!!! The little dark gray one that im questioning the color on is so fast i only got one good pic of her. and im still trying to pick names
Mosaic:
(http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/522273_10150799791808284_524488283_9779478_324513098_n.jpg)
(http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/545132_10150799792368284_524488283_9779484_1030470208_n.jpg)
(http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/36598_10150799792513284_524488283_9779486_921509069_n.jpg)
Dark Grey one:
(http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/398941_10150799792598284_524488283_9779487_316152268_n.jpg) And yes, I realize the spray bottle is in there, I moved it as soon as I noticed it out. they didn't get near it no worries
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How white is the grey's belly? In the photo it looks grey.
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The dark one's belly is grey yes
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That probably is ebony then. Sounds like you got some fancy chins.
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I thought ebonys had to be pure black, not dark grey with a grey tummy? or can they be lighter in color? either way, i did end up with some amazing chins :) <3
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A standard with one ebony gene is lighter than one inheriting the genes from both parents. A homo ebony would be much darker. The gene makes the belly grey instead of white and darkens the coloring on the face and back. My guess is that it is a hetero ebony.
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It's a medium ebony from what I can see. As far as I know, these days breeders kind of did away with the whole hetero and homo ebony thinking. Simply because you can get every hair shiny black ebonies out of chins who are just a standard and medium ebony. And you can also get ebonies out of standard parents that have generations of standard to standard backgrounds except maybe an ebony many generations ago that had been put in the line.
Usually the more proper way of saying it these days, is standard/ebony carrier (for a chin who is born out of a parent(s) that carries or is ebony.), light ebony for the really light dirty bellied ebonies, medium ebony for those who are darker but not as dark as the every hair shiny black ebs (which are usually called dark ebony.). Most people just use the terms of light, medium or dark to explain the ebony the have though. The ebony mutation itself is not alike to other mutations such as hetero beige or homo beige, or white mosaic, etc... it is a bit different and can be confusing to understand sometimes. ;)
The ebony gene itself can show up generations later in a line, when say there was only one ebony ever in the line, many generations back. I just call it tricky. ;) Some people of course still say hetero ebony or homo ebony for terms, and most people understand what they mean when they say that... but it's not technically true with the ebony mutation... doesn't work the same as those mutations that can be hetero (like beige) or homo (again like beige).
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That is good to know. Thanks for the info. Would you consider it to be a partial recessive gene?
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As for genetics, the random/average North American ebony can be considered dominant, recessive and accumulative. At least on this side of the world.
Many breeders back in the day, bred all the different dirty bellied ebonies together, with little consideration as to whether they were breeding recessive charcoals or dominant ebonies, etc... (You can read about all the different ebony type mutations in the US back in the day, in the Alice Kline book on Genetics, I believe.).
Luckily some places like in the UK or abroad, didn't breed all the different strains of ebonies together, and they do have their recessive charcoals apart from their ebonies.
If it sounds confusing, just think of someone who was to breed all different beiges together, recessive beiges and dominant beiges- every kind you know of or have ever heard of.
And call that mutation just simply beige (no mention of dominant or recessive.). All bred together, all different genotypes. It's quite the genetic mess if you think about it.
It would take several generations of outcrossing strictly to standards, to figure out just which strain of ebony you have.
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Wow that does sound like a mess. What I am getting from this is that there are three known ebony mutations and most "ebony" chinchillas and North American chinchillas are typically a mixture of those three. Or is it more complex than this?
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I Agree on it being a Mess, and here are some more pictures :P and yes that would be me :P
(http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/554836_10150803799598284_524488283_9788159_1590601887_n.jpg)
(http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/554387_10150803798398284_524488283_9788143_1715866163_n.jpg)
(http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/544127_10150803799098284_524488283_9788151_1801000127_n.jpg)
(http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/156232_10150803799158284_524488283_9788152_467952690_n.jpg)
(http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/541967_10150803799508284_524488283_9788158_1111158536_n.jpg)
And I must figure out why my camera is being so blurry, it usually takes better pics than it has been...
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Very cute pics! Love the babies and they look to be loving all over you in the photos! ;)
I don't want to change the topic however, but if you look into ebonies and their history or ask old timers (those who've been around 40+ years...), they can explain it better than I ever could. I just know what I have always been told and the ebony mutations here were all bred together. Those overseas, kept their charcoals and ebonies apart, so you will see recessive charcoals mentioned that look like the typical medium ebony over here... Those recessive charcoal when bred to standards, just produce crisp white bellied standards that carry the charcoal gene. You have to breed two charcoal carriers together or a charcoal with a charcoal carrier, in order to produce more charcoals.
I do know I personally had an ebony born out of a chinchilla, that had no ebony traceable in the first six generations of her pedigree. I had to go back further, to find one ebony carrier way back on her dad's side of the history, to figure out how come I had an every hair shiny black ebony/poss sapphire carrier born in the litter. Her sibling in the litter was a solid sapphire and the other sibling was just a standard/poss sc appearing animal (crisp white belly!) and looked the spitting image of her mom and parents. You'd never have guessed there was ebony in the background at all, till looking further back on the pedigrees of the parents. Just to give an example of how tricky the mutation is. :)
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That's very interesting. And winterose both of those chins look very nice in the photos and look like they have a calm disposition.
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They do once they are out of their cage, its catching them that can be a problem, they are all happy to be petted and to nibble on you. but once you try to grab them they want none of it, till you have them out and resting on you. lol
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I don't know if you've seen this post but it might help if you're not familiar with handling chinchillas:
http://www.chinchillaclub.com/forum/index.php/topic,3711.msg28427/topicseen.html#new
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going all the way back to your first post, where you thought that pine bedding might be bad for them? They ARE different than mice/rats/hamsters!, what are you using for bedding now? pine is one of the few woods that is NOT harmful to them, and one of the more commenly used types of bedding for chins. please tell me you are not using ceader bedding! ::scaredspeachless:: ceader bedding is harmfull to them! if they eat it, it will make them verry sick, and when their urine gets on it, it reacts chemically and will produse a gas that is harmful to them!!! CEADER IS VERRY BAD FOR CHINCHILLAS!!! if you are using this, please PLEASE go now and get them somthing elce! if you still dont want to use pine than maby use paper or somthing, but cedar is the absolute worst bedding for chins, and a lot of people use it for rats mice and hamsters because it helps cover the smell, and works well. thats why im worried you may have used it unknowingly. please respond soon to tell what you are using... :'(
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relax, right now I have them on my left over care fresh from when i had my hamster, after that I was going to use woody pet bedding. its like 6 bucks for a 40lb bag, and it work wonders, All the chins I have pet sat for have used it with no ill effect.
http://www.woodypet.com/index.html