Ice cubes and Kaytee + marigold?

[tcraighenry]

I did a search and didn't come up with anything. I wonder if ice is too short!

We started letting our little girl run up and down the stairs at play time. 30 minutes is too long! She has to do it as quickly as possible and doesn't rest a lot.

She got pretty hot today so I grabbed her an ice cube and put it in her cage. She always cools down quickly when I do that .

Anyway, thoughts? Opinions? She loves them and we have a special penguin tray filled with bottled water cubes for her. The little prima donna.

The second question, I found a thread from 2009 but nothing since. We're running low on the Oxbow timothy and my husband grabbed a bag from the pet store. It's the Kaytee with marigold. I was thinking of throwing a little bit of it in with her regular hay so it's not wasted. But not as her primary source. What do you think?

 

[Vcchinchilla]

i do the ice cubes during summer

i know you can do frozen water bottle then put a fleece cover over it and let her lean on it
slab of marble for her to sprawl out on is great as well

i've gotten a few of those kaytee + smth
i usually shake out those extra stuff
give them the hay and extra as treats

i think they can eat marigolds, one of my treat mix from fuzzies kingdom has some
you could ask her

 

[ticklechin]

I don't have a problem with the ice cube per se but chins should not be allowed to overheat during play, either cool down the area or limit the play. If this is the 6 month old she definitely should not be allowed to play that hard, buring of calories she needs and the posibility of low blood sugar seizures is the reason. The hay is ok, kaytee is usually stale but if the chin eats it it works.

 

[tcraighenry]

I know about the play time. I only really noticed when she got back to her cage. I was like :O She's too clever for us. The first time she just kind of hopped around and jumped a step at a time. This time she was racing with virtually no exploration.

We're only going to let her do it for about 10 minutes from here on out and then herd her into the bathroom which is nice and cool.

 

[Airyn]

I'll repost over here... I could see one or two stairs, but a full flight would make me really nervous. One of mine broke her leg in February and I seriously wouldn't wish that horror on my worst enemy.

 

[tcraighenry]

I saw your post.....

 

[Airyn]

Yeah, I figured this thread was more appropriate to post on so that I wasn't hijacking the other.

As for how she broke it... I screwed up. I left her (Nixi) and her mom (Maia) alone in my walk-in closet while I went to grab them hay or food or something. I was only gone for a few minutes when Maia barked a sound I'd never heard before, so I rushed back in to find Nixi on the floor, laying on her side, unable to stand. When I picked her up, her foot was dangling and she made the most pitiful whimper I've ever heard in my life. I have two cages on the floor of my closet, and I'm fairly certain she tried to climb one and caught a leg on the way down. That's my best guess anyway.

By the end of that fiasco, I learned a rather valuable lesson about the true fragility of chinchilla bones when combined with dumb chinchilla owners. Needless to say, no one is allowed to play in my closet anymore, nor are they allowed on anything higher than 2-3 feet, hence my concern with more than a few stairs.

 

[tcraighenry]

Oh my god, your poor baby

We'll have to reconsider. I'm sorry about your little girl.

 

[Airyn]

Thank you... no one's more sorry than I am, believe me! That was February and she's perfectly fine now, but it was a grueling 5 week healing process. I got really lucky, as she was young, it was a clean break, and the emergency vet knew how to properly set the bone. Even so, anytime I see people posting about stairs or heights of any kind, I feel compelled to comment so that others won't make the same mistake I did. Seeing your baby in pain like that gives you quite the reality check.

 

[tcraighenry]

I'm glad she's ok and you have a good emergency vet!

We've had a couple close calls already, she jumped and missed the kitchen sink and flew out of her cage when I was making a video of her. She's trouble.

 

[Airyn]

Oh, they're all trouble! Maia's my jumper and can clear 3.5 feet easily, so I really have to keep a close eye on her. I'm pretty sure Nixi was just mimicking her that day, as the cages in my closet were Maia's old ones. She used to love climbing on top of them, using the wall as leverage to get to the top. Beyond that, Nixi was handfed and I think that really gave her a false sense of her own limitations. She has no fear, doesn't startle easily and had absolutely no idea that she was a chinchilla until I rebonded her with Maia when she was 14 weeks old. You should've seen her face when she realized that someone else spoke her language. The two of them chattered nonstop for the next month. ADORABLE doesn't even begin to cover it. lol