Bathing Chinchillas with Water

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ChinnieShop

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 11, 2011
Messages
444
Location
PA
Hello Everyone,

One of the first things we learned when we first brought our chinchilla home was that they cannot get wet. They must take dust baths, and if they do get wet by accident to dry them immediately. What I have read is that there fur is to thick to dry and can make them sick. Does anyone have any articles or additional information on why they should not get wet.

The reason I am asking is we have an Instagram where we post pictures all the time for our chinchilla shop, and we have many followers, as I was going through the pictures this morning I saw a picture from one of our followers and could not believe it. It seems that this little girl is giving her chinchillas a bath with water, and they look very unhappy. I informed her not to ever do that, but I would like to provide more information as to why this is bad for them.
 

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It promotes fur loss, fur breakage, and fungus, not to mention the stress.

I've done it before, but it's not something I recommend to do on a regular basis.
 
Sounds correct to me, which is nice because many of their articles aren't. I had a chin that needed a water bath once a week due to an incontinence issue. He would only be water bathed from the chest down, and he was towel dried and then blow dried right after. He didn't seem to mind it much, but he was a very chill chin to begin with. Bathing a chinchilla is not something I would ever do to a normal chinchilla who could dust bathe and get clean.

Here is him getting the bath.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi6Z2fTnB8g

And him being blow dried.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VxZQ_uXoyI
 
I can't think of too many reasons why anyone would want to give a chin a water bath. I had to do it one time due to a pair who decided that it was great fun to have one sit inside their hidey house and the other to sit on top of the hidey house and then urinate into the opening in the roof. The poor gal at the bottom got covered in urine. :yuck: Since then I have had to make sure those two do not have a hidey house with a hole in the roof any more.
 
Sounds correct to me, which is nice because many of their articles aren't. I had a chin that needed a water bath once a week due to an incontinence issue. He would only be water bathed from the chest down, and he was towel dried and then blow dried right after. He didn't seem to mind it much, but he was a very chill chin to begin with. Bathing a chinchilla is not something I would ever do to a normal chinchilla who could dust bathe and get clean.

Here is him getting the bath.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi6Z2fTnB8g

And him being blow dried.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VxZQ_uXoyI

Wow that chinchillas looks like he is loving the water bath. I do not think that the ones from the pictures I posted had any issues, I asked the person but have not received a response. In the pictures they look soaked, and from what I have read you should try to avoid getting the water in their ears.
 
I personally have never giving any of mine a water bath, but my oldest girl likes to get very dirty and she has pee stains at times on her underbelly. I usually just scrub it down with a damp cloth and then dry it out and give her a dust bath after it fully dries.
 
I had a little guy with malo. I had to sort of.. bathe him. I just got a washcloth wet with warm water and then wrung it out so it was barely damp. I used it to clean up where his fur was dirty from handfeeding. Handfeeding can be a very messy process and he'd get kind of depressed if I didn't help him clean up. I dried him as well as I could manage with a towel and then gave him a dust bath when he was dry as mentioned by ChinnieShop. I see no reason to submerge a chinchilla or to get them soaked. Even if they've been peed on a little baby shampoo on a damp wash cloth should be plenty. Those chinchillas look very unhappy all soaked like that. I can't imagine it's healthy for them. Is that a momma and her babies in that pic? It looks like one adult and two kits to me. I'd think bathing a kit would be very dangerous.
 
because their fur is so dense, water kind of stays there, it takes a long time to dry, so the water feeds fungus growth basically
 
The malo chins I have done it to appreciated it and did not give me any issues, the problem with those pics is the chin is back in the cage wet, they need to be dried right away and it takes forever and if you don't then there will be issues.
 
I've read in many articles that chins should never get wet!! Their fur is so dense that it takes a very long time to dry so fungus will grow in there. I say, just stick to dust baths! That little girl needs to be stopped because that is sad!! Didn't those parents read up on owning a chinchilla before buying he/she?
 
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