Human food for chinchillas??

[ARS3358]

Hi I am a very new chinchilla owner and I am very confused. I found all kinds of information on line that seems to be wrong. Here everyone says don't give your chinchillas any human food? On line I found stuff like this:
Fresh Vegetables and Fruits
In moderation, fresh vegetables and fruits can be healthful and occasional chinchilla treats -- though no more than 10 percent of his diet. Consider giving treats between two and four times weekly, for example. Some suitable veggie options for chinchillas are carrots, kale, parsley, dandelion greens, lettuce, collard greens and turnip greens. Fruit choices include strawberries, pears, bananas and apples. Always chop vegetables and fruits up into very small bites. Don't let them stay in your chinchilla's cage when they're no longer fresh. If your chinchilla is unwell for any reason, don't feed fruit or other foods that have significant sugar content.

Is this completely wrong?

 

[Amethyst]

The only thing listed that is ok for chins, in moderation, is the dandelion greens, but they should be dried first, and maybe the lettuce if given very sparingly and introduced slowly but is not at all needed in the diet. Any fresh fruit, vegetables, or really any fresh plant life, can cause gas and bloat for chins. All treats should be dried before giving them to your chins.

Fruits are too high in sugar, chins can't process sugars very well which can lead to issues like, obesity, diabetes, seizures, liver and kidney failure, and blindness, as well as sugar is bad for their teeth leading to tooth decay which will lead to dental issues. Some chins have no noticeable ill effects, but other can had issues after just one piece. It's kind of similar to smoking, some people can smoke for years before you notice any health issues, but it doesn't mean it's not doing damage or that it's good for you. If they are feed a proper diet (pellet only food and hay) they are already getting the nutrients they need and are also already getting sugar in their diet (pellets and hay contain sugar), so fruit is adding additional sugar and aren't needed in the diet.

Vegetables can also cause gas and bloat even dried, and some, like the carrots mentioned, are high in sugar.

I think there are two big issues going on for the misinformation, one is that a lot of the info spread around online is outdated, coming from books and research done in the 1980s and earlier. We have learn a lot about long term damage of various diets from simply owning chins since then, but since no new books or offical studies have been done people still fall back to the outdated printed material. Depending on where you look some places still say domestic chins only like on average 10 years (wild chins live 5-10), but with good genetics and better diets, chins are now commonly living 15-20 years or more, living into their 20s is not that uncommon.

Another issue with the spread of misinformation is vet may study rodents as a specialty, but most don't specifically study chinchillas or their diet, so they end up either lumping them in with rodents in general, or more specifically with rabbits and guinea pigs. Although rabbits and guinea pigs have a similar diet, pellets (although different formulas) and hay, they require additional fruits and vegetables in their diet, while chins do not. They are also from a much different natural habitats, for example where chinchillas are from the only real "fruit" is cactus fruit, which is much lower in sugar then most fruits we eat like apples and strawberries, so they never evolved to be able to handle much sugar in their diet.

Here is a list of currently recommended (by chinchilla owners) safe treats for chins. Treats, even the safe ones, it's best to limited to just a couple times a week, and only about a pinch or roughly 1/8tps at a time, and ones like the goji berries should be limited to just one a month (personally I don't give them at all) since they do contain a fair amount of sugar.

 

[ARS3358]

Thanks so much for the clarification and information.

 

[Hmarie]

On the problem of misinformation....we had to take one of our chins to our state's veterinary school's animal clinic this summer. We have an exotics vet closer to us and, after the ordeal we went through,. MUCH more trusted, but she wasn't available in an emergency. Our chin's care was supervised by their top exotics vet, a professor. Another vet involved was a full veterinarian who was getting training beyond that to be an exotics specialist. Their credentials were impressive. But they sent us home with a care sheet that included feeding fresh veggies, and they said, oh he's eating his lettuce fine, etc. My son (13) about freaked. I almost questioned myself on whether what I'd learned about feeding was right, but thought they must be relying, like Amethyst said, on very old assumptions and information. It can be hard to find even an exotics vet who knows about chins. They also just didn't know enough about chin behavior. If I would have followed my gut instead of them we might have saved his leg, which ended up being amputated. (They poo pooed the idea of putting an e-collar on him..."you just can't do that with chins" when he had nerve damage. He then chewed his leg and despite diligent wound care, the nerves didn't heal....maybe they wouldn't have without the chewing but we'll never know. I ended up making him a collar that worked wonderfully and got high praise from another vet we went to in the process. ) You have to carefully vet your vets is I guess my point. When the good folks on this forum recommend vets for various things, I always want to put an asterisk by that. Over the years, we've gone to 4 different "exotics" vets in our city and area. One I trust completely. The most :highly qualified (the university) I trust the least and the other 2 I would trust for certain things but not others. The university vets recommended putting our guy down if he chewed his leg after the initial nerve damage injury. He's our happy, healthy little sweetheart more than 6 months later. Like with human doctors, don't necessarily trust them just because they have credentials. And listen to Amethyst on feeding guidance (and pretty much everything else!! ).

 

[ARS3358]

Thanks for the info. We do have a few exotic animal vets in San Diego (I live an hour from there). I am fighting my husband who thinks this is all bs and we should find information elsewhere. We have a friend who works at the San Diego Zoo with an expert there in chinchillas. He is asking them questions as he want an "experts advice". I am not taking any chances with doing the wrong things.

 

[Amethyst]

Thanks for the info. We do have a few exotic animal vets in San Diego (I live an hour from there). I am fighting my husband who thinks this is all bs and we should find information elsewhere. We have a friend who works at the San Diego Zoo with an expert there in chinchillas. He is asking them questions as he want an "experts advice". I am not taking any chances with doing the wrong things.

Well that is fair, I am just some stranger on the internet, lol. Also I think the San Diego Zoo is actually probably the best one to ask for chinchilla info. I heard they go to seminars regularly on up to date animal care. I would be surprised if they say chins should be fed fruits and veggies.

 

[ARS3358]

I am reporting what he said, here is the email:

We didn't feed our chinchillas wet fruit. Their fur doesn't handle moisture well. I do believe they would sparingly get treats of dried fruit (no added sugar). If I remember correctly they enjoyed dried banana chips and dried papaya the best out of the options.

I visited the area in Peru and Bolivia where they reside and it's pretty baron with limited food options (imagine a higher elevation version of our sage scrub habitat). So sticking with hay and seeds is similar to their natural diet. Of course having something to chew on is encouraged if you haven't seen that already, so their teeth don't get too long.

 

[Amethyst]

I am reporting what he said, here is the email:

We didn't feed our chinchillas wet fruit. Their fur doesn't handle moisture well. I do believe they would sparingly get treats of dried fruit (no added sugar). If I remember correctly they enjoyed dried banana chips and dried papaya the best out of the options.

I visited the area in Peru and Bolivia where they reside and it's pretty baron with limited food options (imagine a higher elevation version of our sage scrub habitat). So sticking with hay and seeds is similar to their natural diet. Of course having something to chew on is encouraged if you haven't seen that already, so their teeth don't get too long.

Oh I see, the friend is not the expert themselves, they are just going by what they think the chinchilla keepers give. The dried fruit, like banana chips and papaya, is outdated and no longer considered good for them, I remember that being suggested back when I first got chins in the '90s. They have tried in the past to give domestic chins the same diet as in the wild, but it failed badly, and we don't have the same kinds of seeds as you find down there. I do agree they can have some kinds of seeds, like grass seeds for example that are low in oils, most seeds we eat or are in rodent treat mixes tend to be the more oily seeds like sunflowers which you would never find where they live. Here is a list of what foods wild chins were found to have eaten by studying their poops, if you look up the plants they are not like what we normally think of when thinking of as seeds we eat. Also the fruit they are known to eat is a type of cactus fruit, which is much lower sugar then fruit like bananas. Here is a site with more info along with the same chart https://www.chincare.com/what-do-wild-chinchillas-eat-research/

 

[Nan]

When I first acquired my chin, from my son who couldn’t keep him where he lived, I fed him tiny chunks of dried fruit as a treat. He loved them and I loved watching him enjoy them. Then I came to understand that, like children, chins will eat things that aren’t good for them, and that as his mom it was my job to protect him. At first I felt like a meanie, “depriving” him of something he liked. But now, his treats involve dried rose hips, hand-picked and dried timothy stalks (he gets organic bagged meadow hay daily, but the stuff I picked from our yard feels special ) and tiny bits of plain shredded wheat. Along with his hay and pellets, he’s a happy, healthy little guy. Have a great time as a new chin owner!

 

[Jawramik]

Thanks for the info. We do have a few exotic animal vets in San Diego (I live an hour from there). I am fighting my husband who thinks this is all bs and we should find information elsewhere. We have a friend who works at the San Diego Zoo with an expert there in chinchillas. He is asking them questions as he want an "experts advice". I am not taking any chances with doing the wrong things.

Just wanted to chime in and say that Amethyst is a very knowledgeable, trustworthy source of information! Not only does she have years (decades?) of experience to draw from, but her advice meshes with the info I've gotten from my vet, who is a qualified exotics vet (they actually do extra years of study and training to gain that qualification, on top of the usual years put into being a vet for more common pets like dogs and cats) and is the only vet in my town who has real experience keeping and treating chins. She's also the sort of vet where if there's ever something she's unsure about, she'll confer with her vast network of colleagues all over the world to make sure she's providing the best possible advice/treatment, so I really trust her.

On top of all that, what Amethyst has said here about diet just makes logical sense. There's hardly any fruit or plants high in moisture and sugar in chins' native habitat, so it tracks that their digestive systems never evolved to process excessive sugar and moisture from their food. Honestly, most animals don't process sugar well (even "natural sugar" found in fruit). With the exception of true frugivores (animals that have evolved to eat mostly or exclusively fruit), most animals do best on low or no-sugar diets.....and that includes humans. Sugar just isn't that good for most of us. Unfortunately, it's also delicious, so most critters WILL eat it quite happily when it's offered, but that doesn't mean it isn't doing damage.

Chins already get some sugar from their pellets, certain woods they love to chew (woods from fruit trees like apple and pear sticks do contain sugar), and even small amounts of sugars in their hay, so when you add sugary treats like dried fruit on top of that, it's just too much.