Experienced Maryland Vet to Neuter Male

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amanda121287

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Jun 7, 2018
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Hello Everyone:

I am new to this site. We have had a Chinchilla for five years and thought it might be lonely. So, I purchased a male to keep ours company. I followed the recommendations to introducing them slowly and everything seemed to be going very well, although slow.

We let them play together when they had free time every night and put them together in a cage for a short while from time to time. Well, last night, they were so cute and were grooming each other and then the new male started humping our original Chinchilla, which greatly confused us. Guess what? Our original Chinchilla is not a male like we had been told and thought for years, but is a female. We could even see what looked exactly like a penis, but have now learned that a female can appear to have a penis, it's the spacing in the area that is important.

Long story short, we want to have the male neutered. We live in Maryland and have a wonderful vet, but they don't neuter Chinchillas. Can anyone recommend a vet in the area (within an hour) that has experience neutering Chinchillas?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
 
I don't have any recommendations for vets, but I also don't recommend neutering at all unless medically necessary, neutering is a very risky major operation. It's not a routine surgery like it is with cats and dogs, and has no know health benefits.

In case you don't already know, chins don't do well under anesthesia and the operation is very invasive (the testicles are tucked up inside so it's really more like a spay) and they can die from complications during and after surgery. It's not uncommon to need to hand feed the chin a few time a day and give him pain meds because he will likely stop eating due to pain. Recover is a couple months, assuming it heals without issue, which is long enough to break the bond. So it's possible they wont like each other after, you will have to re introduce them like new chins all over again. Also you'll need to make sure that he doesn't chew at the surgery site, so you will need to keep an eye on him pretty much 24/7 for at least the first couple weeks.
 
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