HedgeMom
Memory Keeper
You don't experiment on living creatures. And "Trying something" is experimenting.
Ok, here goes my attempt at an explanation. You probably won't pay attention but maybe someone else will.
When you decide to breed something, you literally play "God" with their genetics. Wild chinchillas do not have the man-made diseases and conditions that domestic chinchillas have so they are not part of this discussion.
When you decide to play God, you should consider what the future (in the very far future) impact of your decisions will be because you can't undo them. Once you breed two chinchillas there is no going back and undoing what you've done. There are no takebacks.
Without knowing the background of your chinchillas, you don't know what genes they carry that you can't see. They could carry the gene for malocclusion, which is a painful death sentence for their offspring but might not show in the parents. They might carry the gene for furchewing, yet not be furchewers themselves. You don't know because you can't ask the breeders because you don't have backgrounds.
In addition, a vet is useless. He can tell you if they physically CAN breed but, unless he's a chinchilla judge, he can't tell you if you SHOULD breed them. See, a chinchilla is supposed to look a certain way. It's supposed to have a certain shape and the fur is supposed to be a certain type and the color needs to be clear and clean. You think you know these things but you really don't. It takes years to know what 'clear' means in coat color. Look at the show photos and then look at some pet chins. You'll see pinched necks and lanky bodies and that's not what should be bred. But only a very experienced show person or judge can tell if your chins have the qualities that should be bred.
Now, you say why can't you just breed for the fun of it. Here's a very simple example. Let's use pudding as an example. Let's say that pudding only comes in two flavors, chocolate and vanilla. let's say the law says pudding must only be chocolate and vanilla and can't be anything else. That would be the show quality chins.
So you make a bowl of chocolate pudding and a bowl of vanilla pudding and you decide to see what would happen if you mix them. Well, you'll get something that is neither chocolate nor vanilla pudding. You decide that it wasn't a good idea to mix the two and you want your chocolate and vanilla puddings back. But how can you do that? Once you mix them together, you can't unmix them.
And that's the way it is with chinchilla genetics. Once you breed those two chins, you can't undo it. Those chins might have malo. They might be furchewers. They might be pinch necked and lanky. And then someone who doesn't care breeds them and then forever more those chins have genetic problems because you can't unmix the pudding.
You didn't want to hear the truth, you only wanted to hear praise and support and you didn't get it. I feel bad for your chinchillas because they aren't going to be loved pets but just something to experiment with. I think it's sad that you can't be happy with them just the way they are and you are more interested in using them than loving them.
You can argue all you want and change your story and make stuff up and twist it around and it boils down to this:
You shouldn't be breeding chinchillas.
