Breeders > Breeding 101

Preparing for kits

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DylanJ97:
Hello..
  I have a female who seems to be showing signs of pregnancy and I want to start getting prepared just to be safe. I have been reading around on whether or not to remove the male directly after birth. Correct me if I am wrong but I am seeing that he should be removed sometime before the 72hr mark as that is when the female will go into heat, and he will help the female with the kits. But my question is.. Will a male chinchilla eat/kill babies that are not his own? The female is possibly pregnant with kits from her previous mate and I do not want something going wrong that can be prevented.

BLS Chins:
The male should be removed as soon as you know the female is pregnant. They can breed right after they give birth. The male should stay out till the kits are weaned. Is the female in a baby safe cage? The bars can not be larger and 1/2 inch square,the cage should not he taller than a foot and it should have no shelves or ledges. Another question is are your chins pedigreed?

DylanJ97:
No they are not pedigree, i adopted them from a guy thinking they were both males but after a couple weeks of introduction with my current male I decided to double check everyones gender.  The pair was a male/female pair instead of male/male. I am not sure how far along she is or if she is for sure pregnant. Her behavior has changed so I would rather be safe than sorry.

GrayRodent:
Yeah that's not unheard of. I've seen this happen on occasion on our boards. Sometimes it turns out nothing happened and sometimes I'll see people report the kits had already been born and never suspected they had a pair.
Sometimes they are found dead or dying outside of the cage because they got through the bars.

One thing that can give away breeding between chinchillas is a waxy substance that falls out of the female after mating and forms what's known as a breeding plug. You won't always see it but it's a clue if you do. You may have read average gestation is 111 days but you'll want to add time just to make sure if you don't observe anything.

How old is the female or do you know?

kageri:
The male is not usually a danger to the kits but the female may go after him and he will breed her immediately after giving birth which can be hard on the female.  Plus you'll just be in the same situation another 4 months later.

Some color combinations will create kits that can't survive.  If you have 2 velvets or 2 whites be prepared that the kits may not be viable after birth.

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