Do Chinchillas get bored of toys easily?

[ritachick]

My Chinchy gets excited when she gets a new toy or chew but after a few days they are "dead to her". We have a corner of the basement I call the land of dead toys. She wants nothing to do with them.

Hanging toys? She'll chew them for a while then they're dead to her, or she'll eat her favorite parts then? Nope dead to her
Pumice cubes? Best things since sliced bread first 2 days...now? dead to her
Pine cones? Loved them...now? Dead to her
Lava Ledge? Coolest thing ever. Now? Dead to her

I want to keep her engaged but she's a bit of a diva.

Any suggestions on different toys that yours have loved? Any interactive things for them to do? It seems if she can't chew it up and swallow it she's not interested and that's a lot of what I see out there is just chew toys. She has ledges and we're probably getting her the FN 182 cage so maybe that will help.

Any help would be appreciated

 

[tunes]

I'm sure she's just like anybody else. If she has the same thing every single day, she'll lose interest. Try using some enrichment things, like stuffing an empty toilet paper tube with hay. Make her work for it a little bit.

 

[ritachick]

I'm sure she's just like anybody else. If she has the same thing every single day, she'll lose interest. Try using some enrichment things, like stuffing an empty toilet paper tube with hay. Make her work for it a little bit.

Good idea...the thing is she'll eat the toilet paper roll...is that okay? She pretty much eats everything...I swear she has PICA

 

[Amethyst]

Chins don't play with or chew everything every day, it's good to have a variety at all time so they can decide what they want to chew on that day. Chins are kind of like dogs when it comes to toys, you should rotate out the toys to keep things interesting for them. If the toys or toy parts you take out are still good you can put them back in later. Change them out maybe once a month or so, often enough to keep things interesting but not so often that she doesn't have time to come back to things in a few days or few weeks. You can even just change up where the toys are in the cage during the weekly cage changes, sometimes just moving a toy to a new location or flipping it upside down so a new chew surface is exposed makes it "new" and interesting again.

With things like the lava ledges, he will chew on them the first day or so, but often ignores them for months before deciding to chew on them again. In the mean time it's just another ledge in the cage for him to hop on and help to file his nails. For the hanging toys I like to buy toy parts and use toy kabobs/skewers so every so often I take the toys apart and reorganize them in a new way, taking some things off and adding others. If he likes a specific material, I can even just change out and add more of that. I also mix and match things when putting them together, so some soft stuff like loofah or bamboo crunchers, with harder wood stuff so they have to chew the wood to get to the softer stuff. Also mix various types of wood, soft and harder woods to make it interesting too. I also weave palm leaf into toys as well as the cage bars, again sometimes he goes for it right away, sometimes it will be there for a week or so, but he chews on it eventually.

If your chin actually eats cardboard I would not use it, most chins just shred it, but if you chin is one to eat it then it's not safe, so toilet paper rolls are no good. If they swallow cardboard it can swell in their gut causing a blockage that can kill them (it has happened to chins). However instead of towel paper rolls you can try willow balls, or even cholla logs stuffed with hay. Aside from chews you can also get her a wheel if you don't already have one, just make sure it's a chin safe one (pet stores don't sell safe wheels), solid metal running surface, no wires, and at least 14" but 15-16" is better. You can also make her work for her food a bit too, use a few bowls and put some of her pellets in each bowl around the cage, as well as put hay in various spots around the cage, you can even hide small treats or chew sticks around for the chin to find. Coconut shell halves make good bowls that double as something they can chew on too.