Chinchilla head tilt and watery eyes

[Mushy]

Hope I'm posting in the proper forum...

I just recently got three chinchillas to add to my herd.

Two of which are litter mates and the other was taken from a different household.

The two litter mates are three months old and my female is beautiful and perfectly healthy. Her brother however, has a very distinct head tilt. Almost as if he is about to lie down. I checked his ears and there is no indication of an ear infection, whatsoever. But, it still worries me. I am going to contact an exotics vet to look at him, but until then, does anyone here know what could cause this, other than ear infections?

Aside from the head tilt, his fur, eyes, mouth/teeth, ears, feet, and over all health are just fine. Only the head tilt is wrong. And he doesn't seem to be in any pain, runs on his wheel ALL the time, snuggles and falls asleep, hops around with his sister and their cage mate (he's two months old) and doesn't seem to even notice anything is wrong.

Now my other chinchilla that I took in has mildly watery eyes and a mild amount of gunk coming from them. Like she got something in it. I checked her eyes to see if anything was caught because she was in wood shavings before I got her and I found nothing.

So, this leads me to believe it is something with her teeth. She came with nothing to chew on, so I'm assuming they didn't give her proper chewing stuff to grind her teeth down as they grew. I have since given her a pumice block and a pumice ledge/chew bar, along with some apple branches and a few other things to chew on. She seems receptive to chewing and eats well. But her eyes are still gunky.

I'll also be bringing her to a vet ASAP along with the baby, but in the meantime, can anyone give me any advice on how to help my darlings feel and get better?

Thank you all so much!

(P.S - Apologies if this is in the wrong section. It seemed to be the most fitting one.)

 

[tunes]

The chin with the head tilt is two months old? If he's running around fine and eating and stuff, it's possible that he fell and hurt himself and is permanently like that. As far as an ear infection, you're not going to be able to see that by just peeking in the ear. There is an instrument that goes deep into the ear to check for infection, and if there's head tilt, the infection is usually deep. They can cause permanent neurological damage, so I would check to be sure there is nothing currently going on.

I would make sure the female is anesthetized and has her teeth x-rayed. It's possible there's nothing wrong, but the only way to know for sure is with a full set of x-rays.

You're doing the right thing in getting them to the vet to be checked. There's not much we can tell you to help with either one of them. Both of these particular things really need a vet visit.

 

[Mushy]

Ouch! I sure hope he didn't fall that hard to tilt his head....

I appreciate your help. I'll be sure to get her teeth x-rayed and his ears checked, in particular.

Thank you.