chewing his fur?

[kimbt622]

So, i've had my chin Liv for about a year now and hes my little baby. hes the sweetest thing youll ever meet, always loves attention and cuddling! We got our second chin Indy about three months after Liv and they took to each other very well. A friend of ours had a young 'boy' chin that she could not keep because she has all girls and not enough room for extra cages, so we took him off her hands

however, a few months into having our new boy Benji, we noticed that Liv started having weird spots on his fur like it was slighty shorter than the rest of his fur. i posted a question on another forum and someone suggested that Benji might be a girl because the same thing happened to him. So we looked into it and as we did we noticed that Indy would chase and attack Liv, sometimes pulling his fur out. We realized that Indy was the one who was "chewing" Liv's fur and we found out that Benji was in fact a girl so we immediately returned her to our friend's to ensure our other boys' safety.

Now Benji has been gone for about two weeks i think, its been very hard :tantrum: and I've noticed that Liv's fur does look better and Indy and him do not fight anymore, but there are still some small spots that look a little chewed. I notice him grooming himself sometimes, but I don't know if hes actually chewing. Or could it just be that his fur has not fully grown back in after Indy was bugging him? Help! Also, if he is fur chewing, what can I do?

 

[Parkerspetchins]

It will take a while for the fur to grow back in. If he is chewing himself there isn't much to be done but keep him as stress free as possible. Add extra toys and interest to his cage a little at a time and see if he is diverted. If it is his cagemate chewing then you could separate them but unless they are fighting it probably isn't doing much harm to him other than making his fur look messy. Was it chewed fur or completely missing from fur slips?

 

[kimbt622]

well his cagemate was chewing when we had the girl in the cage (we didn't know it was a girl) but now the two boys are getting along since we returned the girl to a good friend of ours. it's only been two weeks so i guess i'm just impatient but i wasn't sure how long it takes for the fur to grow back in. its not completely missing fur, just chewed