Going from Sunburst to Oxbow

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Joined
Oct 14, 2017
Messages
7
Location
Boston, MA
Hi there! I'm a new chinnie owner. I'm sure this question has been asked a multitude of times, but I couldn't really find the exact answer I was looking for on the forums here.

When my boyfriend and I got our chinchilla almost a month ago, the pet store person told us they were feeding her the Sunburst Gourmet food, and me being the idiot I am went and bought it since I thought that's what she'd be used to. She's almost out of food now and I went to go and order her a new bag, but over the weeks I've been noticing that she pretty much just picks out the treats from the bowl and leaves both her hay and pellets fairly untouched. She's a very active girl and poops like no other, so I'm not worried about any dietary problems, but I don't like the fact that her food has all these extra things in there and I feel bad for more or less giving her all these treats for a month and not giving her the diet she deserves.

I just went ahead and ordered a bag of the oxbow pellets and both the timothy and botanical hay from amazon (the latter I'm using as a treat), but I want to make sure I switch her over properly without causing any upset. Is there a sure-fire way to do this? She's warmed up to us very quickly so I don't want to do anything that would make her dislike us.

Here's our sweet girl below, hanging out with her new fleece liners I had made :dance3:

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If it was me, I would just do a cold switch. When you have a feed full of junk, you're better off getting it away ASAP. If you do this, just make sure you provide lots of good quality hay to much on. Oxbow is an excellent chin food, and I'll bet she takes to it fairly quickly.

If you are worried about doing that, pick every single treat out of the food before you give it to her. Then you can do a slow switch 1/4 new, 3/4 old; 1/2 new, 1/2 old; 3/4 new, 1/4 old, then off.
 
We switched her cold turkey and she absolutely loves the oxbow pellets. She hasn't eaten too much of the hay, but she does seem to like it more than the other brand we had. We gave her a few pieces by hand and she ate it right away, whereas with the other brand she would take one bite and then throw it on the ground, haha. Thanks for your help!
 
just an fyi; oxbow has recently come out with a second line of chinchilla pellets. The first line, oxbow delux, is a good quality food. There new second line 'oxbow garden select' (iir) is a bad food for chins. They should have nuts, seeds, fruits, veggies, in there diet. So make sure to check that your are getting the healthy line!
 
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