First off I'd like to say I love this site and wish I had found it sooner, the amount of info here is truly amazing. I've been reading forums for about a month now so I figure it's time to let you know a bit about my experience with chinchillas. I currently own two 5 year old grey chinchilla brothers, named Bazil and Wicket.
They are far from my first chins though, my first I got in Dec '94, a little female named Eve (sadly she passed away suddenly feb '98 from what we believe was a seizure :cry3
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I owned 12 chinchillas between '94 and 2002, including 2 little kits that where born when one of my pairs that I was told was male/male turned out to be male/female, oops. I did however know what to do since I also owned a male/female pair that had lived together and thought they would be the ones having kits. Turns out a lot of what I was told and/or thought I knew was very wrong, but in the 90s chinchillas were still new to the pet world, at least in the area I lived.
The two boys I have now I bought 2 years ago with my husband, we had been casually looking after my guinea pig died. A pet store was selling two 3yr old boys for someone who was moving and unable to take them with her, they were hand raised from birth so they are super friendly and oddly fearless, they chase and attack my cats :hilarious:. They came with an ok size cage, but it only had 2 shelves and had a plastic house, plastic food bowl, plastic water bottle, etc (all that plastic stuff was tossed as soon as I got home). I just recently upgraded them to a new ferret nation cage, they love it, I'll post pics on the FN forum later if I can stop adding and tweaking things long enough to take a pic.
Ok, sorry for the long post, I just get so excited talking about chinchillas (most people don't understand, figure people here do though). :bliss:
ps,
Just so you know the plastic ball in the second pic was never used as a run around ball, merely something for them to jump in and out of while playing outside the cage, it broke (not when they were in it, the dogs liked to roll/herd it around when it was empty and one sat on it :laughitup.
They are far from my first chins though, my first I got in Dec '94, a little female named Eve (sadly she passed away suddenly feb '98 from what we believe was a seizure :cry3
.I owned 12 chinchillas between '94 and 2002, including 2 little kits that where born when one of my pairs that I was told was male/male turned out to be male/female, oops. I did however know what to do since I also owned a male/female pair that had lived together and thought they would be the ones having kits. Turns out a lot of what I was told and/or thought I knew was very wrong, but in the 90s chinchillas were still new to the pet world, at least in the area I lived.
The two boys I have now I bought 2 years ago with my husband, we had been casually looking after my guinea pig died. A pet store was selling two 3yr old boys for someone who was moving and unable to take them with her, they were hand raised from birth so they are super friendly and oddly fearless, they chase and attack my cats :hilarious:. They came with an ok size cage, but it only had 2 shelves and had a plastic house, plastic food bowl, plastic water bottle, etc (all that plastic stuff was tossed as soon as I got home). I just recently upgraded them to a new ferret nation cage, they love it, I'll post pics on the FN forum later if I can stop adding and tweaking things long enough to take a pic.
Ok, sorry for the long post, I just get so excited talking about chinchillas (most people don't understand, figure people here do though). :bliss:
ps,
Just so you know the plastic ball in the second pic was never used as a run around ball, merely something for them to jump in and out of while playing outside the cage, it broke (not when they were in it, the dogs liked to roll/herd it around when it was empty and one sat on it :laughitup
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