Picky eater?

[Lulu_13]

I have had my chinchilla for over a year and I'm having troubles understanding what's going on with her now. I have never had this problem but just about a week ago she stopped eating her pellets. I have given her the chinchilla food that is blended with all sorts of things but contains mostly pellets. She would eat every last bit. This last bag of food I got her was not the same one that I usually got because they were out of the usual stuff. I never noticed until about two days of her having it that it had way too many treats in it. I started to notice that it was making her poop smaller so I switched to straight pellets. She wouldn't even touch her food after that. Then she stopped pooping on a whole for about three days. She was still drinking and eating hay and eventually she started pooping a little more. I brought her to the vet and he said there are no signs of her being constipated. He checked her teeth and found that one was kind of sharp so he trimmed it down and found that she has lost a lot of weight. He thinks that she's only being picky now. He also gave me the critical care powder to give her if she didn't eat that day. She still has not touched the pellets and trying to do this critical care is really tough considering how fragile they are. Will she eventually eat the pellets or will they be so stubborn and starve themselves to death?
(I am offering no treats. Just food and hay.)

 

[Amethyst]

If your chin doesn't eat it will starve and die, you have to force feed. The easiest way to restrain a chin for feeding is to wrap it up like a burrito with just it's head sticking out. When they stop eating for more then a day the good bacteria in their gut needed for digestion starts to die, and it can be a steep uphill battle to get them back to health after that. The way their digestive tract works they need to be processing food almost all the time, and pooping about once a minute when awake, so if she is not eating you need to be pushing the critical care into her several times a day. Just to maintain current weight if the chin isn't eating on her own she needs to be eating at least 60 CC of critical care a day, spread out over several meals, more if you need to put weight on her.

The mixed foods are bad, low quality pellets and junk food treats which over time will cause health issues, like kidney and liver failure, obesity, and diabetes. Also as you've now seen it encourages picky eating, it's like giving a kid Lucky Charms cereal all the time then suddenly saying here eat Cheerios. Chins shouldn't have fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, berries, or animal products, they can't properly digest any of that and all those treat filled foods and a lot of pet store treats contain some or all those things. What kind of pellets did you switch to? Good brands include Oxbow, Mazuri, and Tradition. Also did they take x-rays? or just look at the front teeth? In chinchillas both the front and back teeth grow all the time and need to be worn down, without and x-ray you can't get a good look at the molars because of the way their tiny mouths are. So even if the front teeth look fine, a painful over grown molar, one with a tooth spur on it, a tooth infection, or even something as simple as something stuck in her teeth it could very likely be why she doesn't want to eat.
You should also get a gram scale (most small kitchen scales measure in grams) so you can keep tract of her weight, a lot of times weight loss is your first clue something is wrong.

 

[Lulu_13]

He gave her the sleeping gas to look at her back teeth. I have been trying to force feed with the critical care but she seems not to be hungry at all. Could it be that she doesnt like the taste of the pellets I have?

 

[Cuddlebug]

Just for clarification, a picky chin will not starve itself, but one that is ill or has problems with its mouth or teeth can starve to death. The picky eater will usually start eating after just a few day. One with problems will not eat until the problem is solved. I think the vet needs to take a closer look at this little one. There could be dental issues. Until the chin is eating on its own, it needs to be force fed and weighed regularly.