Has anyone here had experience keeping chinchillas and rabbits at the same time? I have a chin and a housemate of mine will be getting a rabbit in the next few weeks. They’ll be in separate rooms and will never interact, but I’ve heard that rabbits can spread disease to chinchilla and vise versa. We were wondering if there were any more precautions we could take to ensure the safety of both animals.
Rabbits and Chinchillas
- Thread starter LennyChim
- Start date
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The biggest thing is rabbits can carry a bacteria called Pasteurella without being sick or showing symptoms themselves unless stressed or their immune system is weak, but is deadly to chinchillas. It's spread by body fluids (like spit, snot, etc) so it's best to keep them in different rooms, no sharing toys, and wash your hands between handling the rabbit and chin. A vet can test the rabbit for Pasteurella though, that way you will know for sure how careful you need to be. Chins don't carry any diseases or bacteria, so unless the chin is sick it wont pass anything on to the rabbit. The most common issues chins get that they can be passed on to rabbits (and rabbit can pass to chins) are giardia (a gut parisite that causes diarrhea) and ringworm (a fungal skin infection).
I have had both at the same time. I'll second everything Amethyst said and when I followed that, I had no problem with mine.
