Chinchilla allergic to dust bath?

[jenjenn2005]

My chinchilla always has a watery eye after getting her dust bath. It gets all matted and crusty on the inner corner. This only happens after dusting, and she only gets her dust for about 5-10 minutes. I use blue cloud dust. If I go about a week not dusting her, her eye seems to improve, but if i let her dust every 3-4 days it stays watery. Anyone have any suggestions of what I should do?

 

[alli713]

I've heard of this happening in some chins. What you can do is get some saline eye drops (the human kind) and put a drop or two in each eye after the dust bath. This will help wash out any dust that may be getting in her eye and irritating it.

 

[eroomlorac]

I have a chin that has this same problem. It doesn't happen every time she dusts but it does happen on occasion. I don't know why it happens but it doesn't seem to bother her and she seems healthy in every other way. I just keep on eye on her (no pun intended) and make sure it doesn't seem to be getting worse.

 

[Nervousings]

I've heard of this happening in some chins. What you can do is get some saline eye drops (the human kind) and put a drop or two in each eye after the dust bath. This will help wash out any dust that may be getting in her eye and irritating it.

does it need to be pure saline drops, or does visine work?

 

[Jenn]

I don't know how any chin really can tolerate a dust bath, lol. They kick up so much dust, I don't know how they can breath! lol. Maybe your chin is just simply getting dust in her eye...maybe not closing it during a bath, and it becomes irritated. Saline drops sound like a great idea to flush out the eyes.

 

[alli713]

does it need to be pure saline drops, or does visine work?

I would use just saline. The other types normally have different additives.

 

[jenjenn2005]

Thanks so much! I will definitely try that and see if it helps.

 

[jenjenn2005]

What kinds of drops do you recommend? I went to 3 different stores and couldn't find any just plain saline eye drops, everything has additives.

 

[alli713]

That's odd, you didn't find any Saline drops? I have some with my chin items and I just got them at Walmart.

 

[jenjenn2005]

What brand are they? All i found were things like clear eyes, visine, artificial tears, allergy drops etc. Everything had glycol or HCl. I found plain saline for the nose. Is this the same thing?

 

[Ippo456]

Or perhaps try to look for eye-cleaning solutions (different than eyedrops or saline solutions for contact lenses) & see what their ingredients are.

 

[alli713]

I'm pretty sure they're just the generic Walmart brand. I can look for you tomorrow though to see what brand for sure.