I have a pregnant chin and need a little help.

[daniellewrhs09]

Hello! Let me start off by saying I hope everyone is doing great!!! I have a few questions and hopefully someone with experience will see this and won’t mind answering them and please if anyone has any kind of additional information that will be helpful to me in the near future I greatly welcome it!!! I believe my chin is pregnant right now. I have weighed her every now and then since I got her back in April and she’s been pretty steady at 23.4 ounces but on Sep 27th she was 25.6 ounces and Oct 14th she was 28.2 ounces so since Sep 27th (her first weight gain weigh in) she has gained a total of 4.8 ounces. Do you know around how far along a chin is when she starts gaining weight every day? I read online it was around day 42. Has that been anyone’s experience or do you know if that’s true? And do you know if at some point nearing the birth does she stop gaining weight? And if they do, do you know around what day that would be? Also is it true that around day 90 her nipples will start coming up? Or do you know how far along she is when she starts sleeping all the time day and night? I’m trying to figure out how far along she is but I keep getting different info from different places so I figured my best bet would be to ask someone who has been through it. This is my first experience with a pregnant chin. I have hedgehogs and got through their pregnancies but I know nothing about a pregnant chin. Thanks for reading and if you can answer any of my questions I would greatly appreciate it!! And as I mentioned before, if you have any kind of other information that would be helpful I would love to read that too!!!!

 

[Amethyst]

I'm not only not an expert but have mostly only read stuff about breed, but I can tell you want I do know. You may want to reach out to a breeder, they would be able to give you more informed info. Breeding chins is really not something to take on lightly, a lot can go wrong, so it's best to have a breeder, ideally one you bought one or both your chins from, to mentor you, they would also know their breeding stock the best.

Chins are pregnant for roughly 111 days (but it's best to count up to 120 just to be safe), and from what I've heard they gain the most in the last couple week before giving birth, so at around 90+ days. However weight is not a good indicator at all for chins, some gain a lot in chunks, some gain steadily the whole time, some don't gain at all, and in some odd cases (my guess is the chin was overweight to begin with) chins have even lost weight when pregnant. Also if you don't know for sure she is pregnant or not there are other things like tumors that can cause weight gain, so a vet visit is not a bad idea. Aside from that, to get an idea of how far you can count how long since she was last with a male, unless you still have her with the male, in which case I would separate them right away especially if you have no idea when the mated. The male can mate with and get the female pregnant again (their uterus has two "horns" so if kits are only in one side they can get pregnant with another litter on the other side) a few days before and after giving birth, meaning she will be trying to grow new babies while also nursing newborns, which is very hard on the female and in some cases can even kill her. Also make sure you have a vet that you can go to that has experience with chinchillas, difficult births do happen and needing emergency c-section is not that uncommon.

Also just so you know, most people weigh chins in grams, it's just easier to see small weight changes since they are so small. For example a weight loss of more then about 20 gram is enough to be concerned (as in reason to keep an eye on the chin) but that would only be about 0.7 in ounces, which doesn't sound like much so might not raise alarm.