excessive scratching! help!

[Chelsluvschins]

My chin has been scratching a lot the last couple of days and she has never done this before. She is scratching with her feet like a dog with fleas and biting her fur. I have made a lot of changes these past couple of days as well. I just built her a brand new cage made of pine frame and panels with pine shelves on the inside that are covered in ceramic tile. I moved her into this new cage just 2 days ago and shortly after that is when I noticed her excessive scratching. I have not changed her food, hay or dust, but I did just introduce her to kiln dried pine bedding in her new cage. She has never been in bedding before as her old cage had a wire bottom with a slide out pan.
I have been reading through different forums and I have read that kiln dried pine or aspen is the best for chinchilla bedding. So why is my chin scratching so much?? Is she sensitive to the new bedding because she's not used to it?

Help!! She has me so worried! I just want to help her! What should I do about her itching?

note- I have not noticed any fur loss (yet). I give her a dust bath daily (which I have now learned to reduce it to 2-3 times a week). Her food, hay, dust is the same kind I have always used, the only thing new is the pine bedding as well as her new custom built cage.

 

[Stackie]

It's most likely dry skin from the daily dust baths. It can really dry out their skin. I'd give her at least a week without a dust bath to give her skin time to settle and see if it helps. If not, I would change the bedding. Keep an eye out for missing fur patches with dry/scaley/red skin.

 

[Chelsluvschins]

I called 2 different vets today about it and one of them said that the pine bedding could possibly be infected with mites! But I'm not sure how likely that is, especially since I bought kiln dried pine... doesn't that mean that the pine is disinfected??

She has never had an itching problem before, and I have always given her the dust bath daily.. so if it is dry skin why would it just start 2 days ago, exactly the time i introduced the new cage and bedding? (I've had her for a little over a year since she was a baby)
Is it possible that she could be allergic to the bedding?

I think I might just take her to a vet that works with exotic animals to have her checked out. I can't stop worrying about her!!

 

[becky12883]

If she went from no pine to a pine cage with pine bedding, she may be allergic to the pine. I would do as Stacie suggested and then if there's no progress, ditch the pine. Hopefully you haven't gotten rid of the old cage yet, you might need it.