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Hello Dee, welcome to the parallel universe of chin parenthood: chins are extraordinary creatures; not terribly cuddly but perfectly capable of filling the hole left by a cat or even a dog. Scotland is a good place for chins: the only thing one has to watch out for is excessive humidity, which...

At playtime I sneak out of the play area, which is chin-proofed, and after making sure to collect any discarded apple sticks (they break havoc if not) get poop, loose hay and residues of bath dust out of the cage with the vacuum cleaner in less than minute My boy has at the bottom of the cage a...

Many thanks; very timely I was going to buy some oat hay but if oats contain glyphosates it may be wise to avoid the hay as well. His dehydrated kale made an interesting salad topping.

How did you get the boys to try the wheel? Before getting the spinner I borrowed a wheel from a friend to see whether my boy was interested. After a few days gathering dust in the cage, I tried to tempt him with, what else, food, and I swear I could hear the wheels of his French mind turning...

Exactly; if I were a lecturer in a vet school one of the assignments would be to trawl a forum like this: it would not only give them a grasp of the issues involved with the species. but make them ask some relevant questions. Talking about greens: my boy is crazy about dehydrated nettles. stem...

There still are some chins surviving in a reserve in the north of Chile (there are vids in YouTube, some confusing degus and vizcachas with chins, obviously no Specsavers in the area.) We know that there are some chins around because in 2020 a herd of 25 was found living on top of 3.5 million...

Just found your post: I have been asking myself a similar question about all the energy wasted in treadmills. My lazy rescue boy woudl not touch a running wheel with bargepole but in principle if connected to a dynamo & battery, energetic runners at a wheel could well power their own small...

I am always looking for ways of expanding the playtime repertoire and I found this interesting: do you assemble a playpen on the bed or create an enclosure in a four poster bed?

Prepare to be horrified; no wonder the first vet recommended greens and you were lucky he did not recommend something worse. Here is the URL the type of article young vets may be reading about chins' diet in scientific journals. The publisher is known for publishing peer reviewed articles...

A This is very interesting. Do you mean cork as in those cork tiles used for flooring? Guaranteed fun times I imagine it means making holes or chewing it to ribbons.

Thank you for this thread. Because I am a worry wart I have been taking my chins for anual check ups to a vet two hours away from my home under the wrong assumption that 'exotics' meant 'unusual species' but it is just vet jargon for any animal other than cats and dogs. All that while I have...

Or perhaps putting a very small amount of dust (or dust on a face towel) inside a bath house? Bath houses seem to be irresistible to chins (mine tries jump in in even when it is empty and standing on the wrong side) and, because the bottom is curved, rolling in it comes quite naturally. Hope it...

Many thanks for the link: excellent description of the variety of shades standards can have. All the sites I had visited before gave a much more perfunctory description, so I believed standards meant looking like the very few chins now left in the wild.

Thank you for your response. I rescued him from an animal shelter so I know nothing about his parents. I assumed he had one ebony parent because his coat was very dark when I got him and none of the standard chins I had seen thus far (admittedly not many; mine were all beiges) had solid black...

Hope for some help in solving this mystery, About a month ago I rescued male chin who looked to me (no expert in chin genetics and previously only had beiges) like an ebony carrier, with a white tummy, a very black triangle on the head and a black back. What baffles me is that he is looking...

I was thinking this morning that the world is divided in two groups: those who have (or had) a chin and those who do not, because once you had one you are never the same again. More than any other pet I know chins open for their owners a door to an uncharted and surprising universe. Margaret...

My rescue chin had a serious problem with dry ears as a result of being a bath monster. Like you, I found the vet rather unhelpful, with recommended balms ending as oily marks on his coat. So I made my own with 2/3 eco aloe vera gel (pricey but worth every penny) + 1/3 Sudocream Care (tested it...

Love the name Margaret for a chin! And oh, yes, those brats have a Rolex in their brains even if the routine is not related to food or play. I clean my boy's cage twice a day: early morning and evening before bedtime. The early morning one is because during the night he goes for his chews and...

Sometimes it just takes patience and loads of it. I have a rescue boy who was abandoned for being uncuddly and bloody minded and it took ages for him to become friendly (never cuddly, though) and now he is even clicker trained!. At the beginning, at play time I wheeled his cage to a...

Many thanks Amethyst and Tunes for your input because now I know there is no need to worry. His teeth are fine (I take his once a year to the exotics clinic for a check up) and although he may not actually eat much of it, he definitely chews on the hay I loop every night together with his...