What's it like evolving from owner to breeder?

(I'm not thinking about breeding or anything!)

There was a recent thread from a woman who wanted to move her chins into her shed, and people answered that it depended on whether she kept pets or chins for breeding. If pets, it was time to give her chins to someone with more quality time to give, but if breeding, it was fine. This got me thinking.

How does your relationship with your animals change if you start breeding on a small scale? Presumably, most of you started out as owners. When you have 800 animals, I'm sure they're primarily livestock, but what if you only have 20-30? How did you shift your perception from owner of pets to breeder? Do you keep pets and breeders? Does the fact that the chins socialize with each other mean they need less attention from you affect that?

I feel like I'm not articulating well, but this is something I've been wondering about for a while now.

The relationship with breeding animals certainly can be very different from one with a few pets. Some breeders can look at everything very objectively and not get too emotional over their animals, some of them (like myself) tend to think of them all like they are still pets. It's going to depend on the person caring for them.

I definitely have chinchillas here that are just my personal pets that I love, mostly my oldies. It's actually a surprising number that are not really breeders or have been taken out of breeding. For me I never really thought of them as just being breeding animals. My customers are mostly pet people so I tend to raise the chins more like pets than livestock.

If people are breeding, sometimes they take a step back and look at the animals more like a business proposition. They don't really need their breeders to be pampered pets, so keeping them in a shed or outbuilding makes sense to them. They're probably not going to be letting them out to play or handling them much. The job of those chins is to produce offspring and that's about it. There's nothing wrong with that, that's just the way it is with breeders of many different animals. Here it's a little different because my business and my life is different from other breeders.

Excellent answer, Susan! Thank you. That's exactly what I wanted to know. Come to think of it, a good friend of mine's parents breed corgis, cavaliers, and labs (we make excuses to go visit him at home as much as possible, hah!), and though all the dogs are very well taken care of, the breeding corgis live in the lower half of the split level while they have large heated sheds dedicated to the cavaliers and the labs. However, they have three "upstairs" dogs (Dilly and Whimsy the corgis and Calypso the very clumsy lab puppy) who, though they do breed Dilly and plan to breed the other two once they're older, are definitely pets first. I should ask his mom this same question, actually!

We had started small and grew, and grew some more. We started with just a handful of animals in a bedroom. They all had names and nice pet/colony cages. Then we grew some more and they moved to our basement with around 20-30 animals in breeding run. But still had themes names for the year. But then grew again and dropped the names to letters and numbers. As we got bigger we have less person time for the individual chinchillas and thus not really as attached to very many except for our few original animals. But we do keep a couple pets pampered up stairs in a custom made cage.

I have to agree with Susan, she made a lot of good points.

For me, I still have a few pets, but the majority of my own chins are breeders at this point (16 at this point, so still small scale). I haven't completely moved over to the breeder mindset yet, as my two pet-only chins are living in FN's, and growers get part of an FN as well.

But there definitely is a different mindset between breeders/pets. I take out my pets and the rescues and they get playtime as time allows and they get all sorts of toys and hammocks and beds and wheels and and such. My breeders -- now, I do have toys hanging on the doors of their runs (enough that you really need to open the door to see the chins), and they have names -- but that's about where it ends.

All my chins, breeders included, get apple sticks maybe 2x a week, chews, and hay (but again, that's only 18 chins total). I have two breeding pairs in cages somewhat bigger than run size, they get a little hammock and hidey house as well. But at the end of the day, the breeders can't have the same things the pet chins have. Wheels would be dangerous, especially with potential babies in the cage, there's no room for hammocks in the runs (and no easy way to hang, even if there was room), no room for shelves....

In terms of care, I treat them all the same, they all get rushed to the vet if something is wrong, they all always have food/water/something to chew. But the breeders somehow I worry less about. I've had females get their collar off and attack others, but in general there are less opportunities for injury in the run.

That all said, I can still tell that I still have more of a pet mindset -- case in point. I just brought home a Ritterspach herd improvement male that I need to swap out one of my standard males for. Like I can't not use this male as he's exactly what one of my runs needs. He currently is in one of my QC townhomes and has a wheel, hammock, shelves, and so on. I'm switching over his food before I stick him in the run, which is why he's not there yet. I see him in that cage running on the wheel and sleeping in the hammock and hopping around the cage on the shelves, and part of me still feels somewhat bad taking that away from him. But at the end of the day, I didn't buy him for a pet, I bought him so I could improve my lines, so he will go into the run soon.

I think that everyone is going to have a different experience with this... I started as a breeder not a pet owner... My initial game plan looked great on paper but as I experienced different things first hand my opinions of things changed. I now look at each situation on an individual basis...I have noticed that some chins are ok in runs and some do better in pet cages in pair situations... I would love to spoil them all as pets but with 50+ chins that is really hard to do... At the same time I do want to utilize my good males to their fullest potential but sometimes you have to adjust who to put with who because each one is an individual and sometimes it just doesn't play out the way you want it to. Finding balance is the key with the hand you are dealt so now I am kinda working backwards in the sense that I am keeping babies in pet cages upstairs. Not only to socialize them but to kinda fill my "pet keeping" urge as well... if that makes any sense...

How did you get straight into breeding, pookinaround?

Great thread!
Started off taking a few chins here and there, became loving pet owners and now were breeding. All of our chins get a supplement nightly, fresh hay and bedding changes. Everyone has names (flower theme), toys and decent size cages. However, Im home all the time. If I wasn't I could clearly see how this wouldn't happen. We have a smaller number of chins and when it expands I imagine some of our equipment and routine will change to.

I am a stay at home mom and I have always loved chins ever since I was a kid. Ever since I was a teenager I wanted to find my "niche" with animals. I was finally at a point in life where I was financially secure enough to be able to do it. I own my own home and felt now was a good a time as any...(I am 36 now). I started looking around at chins and was thinking about just starting out as a pet owner but I became very taken back by the fact that there really weren't any reputable breeders in my area (at least that I could find at the time). So I decided to take the plunge and bought my first 3 chins...and started racking up the miles on the car building the herd even more, meeting different people and going to shows, etc....lol I wanted to do what I could to be able to offer good quality animals in my area since I myself really couldn't find any at the time I first started looking. It has certainly been a roller coaster ride but I honestly do not regret any of it and I do feel like I have finally found my "niche" with chinchillas... I am still pretty new and still have a LOT to learn but I have met a ton of great people and really have been having a lot of fun with my chinchilla hobby...