Help Please!! We did not know we had a male chin

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Joined
Mar 26, 2019
Messages
6
Location
Florida
About a year ago we bought a pregnant chinchilla, her name is Lulu. She gave birth to what we thought were 2 female chins. Fast forward to 15 days ago when we came home and saw that Lulu gave birth to 3 babies! That's when we realized that the 2 chins she gave birth to a year ago were not 2 females, but a female, Marbles and a male, Jack. We now know that Marbles is also pregnant and going to give birth at any point. We have a 2-floor cage so we sectioned it off and left Lulu in the bottom floor with her newborns and Jack and Marbles are on the top floor. We are very attached to all of them but we have 6 chinchillas now due to the newborns and more are coming since Marbles is pregnant. We can not keep all of them. As very emotionally invested parents we can't seem to make a decision on who to keep and who to give away, especially since we love them all and we are worried about giving them away to unfit people that may not love them as much as we do. We considered neutering Jack so if we do give them away new owners won't have this problem. However, after doing research, neutering seems very dangerous and invasive and we do not know if we should go through with it. They are all bonded, especially Marbles and Jack since they live without Lulu now, to prevent her from getting pregnant again. We do not want to neuter Jack but if we don't we have to separate them and potentially cause them to get depressed. We want to get a new cage and leave Jack by himself and let Lulu and Marbles have the 2-floor cage with all their babies.

Is leaving Jack by himself in a new cage going to cause depression? Should we get Jack neutered and let him live with Marbles again? Will putting Marble and Lulu together in the same cage cause conflict since they will both have babies? Should we give them away in pairs, since we're incapable of taking care of this many chinchillas? We can keep between2-4 maximum. Please, can someone more experienced help us? How do we find people that will be fit parents to our babies? We have no idea how to make sure our loved babies are happy and we make the best decision for them. Please someone help us, all replies are greatly appreciated!
 
You need to immediately separate Marbles and Jack. They are litter mates. You would not breed dogs who are litter mates, right? They are going to keep breeding. She can breed back even while she is still pregnant. She will get over her attachment. She has no choice. Soon she'll have babies to take care of and she won't have time to miss him. Jack will just have to learn to deal with it. The risk is too great for her to get pregnant again if he stays with either of them.

If you can find an experienced vet, castration is definitely an option. Chins have become a much more popular pet so some vets are more experienced with them and procedures like castration are becoming more common. You need to interview vets and pick the one that has the experience necessary.

I would not try to put the two females back together at this time. Once the kits are weaned, then it would be okay to try, but introducing a female into a cage where there are kits and kits about to be born could be dangerous. Once the kits are weaned, then you could give it a try.
 
Even if you did find an experienced vet to do the neutering, and there are no complications, Marbles and Jack would still need to be separated while Jack heals. Chins are slow to heal so they would have to be separate for 12 weeks, which is long enough to break the bond they have now.

A better and safer idea would be to just keep Jack separate, he will get over it, as I said he would have to be alone while healing if you got him neutered anyway. If any of the kits turn out to be male you can try to bond them with Jack later though.

If I were you, once all the kits are weaned I would try to make two pairs to keep, see if Marbles and Lulu will bond again. Then if there are any male kits try to bond one with Jack, the rest I would find new homes for. I can't really help about re-homing, the only time I did was to a vet tech or to my mom (but not sure that counts, lol). My only suggestion would be print out a care sheet, and go over it with the potential new owners and make sure they understand the requirements of owning a chin. Also if you can pair them up that would actually be better, and less likely for them to try to pair them themselves and end up with kits too. Just double, maybe even triple check that you do in fact have same sex pairs when pairing them up.
 
Yeah what everyone is suggesting is good. I wouldn't try neutering due to the danger. If you get a female I will be happy to be a home to her if you are located close by.
 
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