Rescue Pair

[inzeos]

This weekend my wife and I stumbled upon a post on our local Craigslist. The offer was for two young chins, with cage and supplies for a very modest rehoming fee. We decided that we would go look at them with the possibility that they would come home with us.

After seeing their current situation we decided it would be best to bring them home and into quarantine from our current chin.

Their brief story is that they were owned by the son of a lady. He was unable to care for them well enough while going to school. She had done her best to care for them but was not willing to be their forever care taker. The home they were in was that of a bird breeder, with many loud birds, which I imagine would provide constant sources of stress for the little chins.

Due to the hour of the day that they came home with us we were forced to abandon their cage, which was in need of a thorough cleaning in our garage for the evening. We have them temporarily housed in our first chinchilla's home. We were left to believe they are boy and girl and will be working to separate them tomorrow to avoid a pregnancy if they are and she isn't already carrying.

After introducing them to their new home they were already willing to eat our hay and existing chin feed, which I believe is a good sign. Tomorrow I will be out to the wood shop to fashion up some new perche's and hidey huts.

Yet to be named...

The little grey (standard?) chin is an observed wall walker.

 

[mishellyshel]

hopefully they are same sex so they can stay together. good save. they are both really cute.
i got one of my boys from craigs list.........similar situation except Stitch was pretty well cared for. he was free, the people just wanted him to have a good home.

 

[inzeos]

We are giving them at least this evening and part of tomorrow to destress before trying to handle them to get a real gender verification.

 

[starleomach]

Good luck with them hopefully they are the same sex. My sister lives in Rochester!

 

[inzeos]

We lucked out today and talked the local Petsmart Manager into price matching an online price for our second FN-142. Got it set up in a jiffy and used the bottom liner from our first cage to divide this one up. The white chin is now in the top and our little wall walker is in the bottom. They are starting to get used to us even after just a handful of hours of exposure. I think it has to do with the general quite nature of their new home, no parrots and other birds constantly squawking.

 

[Parkerspetchins]

Congratulations! Did you sex them? It would be awesome if the previous owner was wrong and they are same sex. Very cute chins!

 

[inzeos]

Not yet, was letting them destress before trying to handle them. This afternoon they were willing to allow a few gentle pats and itches.

They have a decent size difference so I'm wondering if the white one is older.

 

[RDZCRanch]

I'm glad you got them and can give them a great home.

You need to sex them ASAP if you don't want babies. Sexing takes mere moments...grabbing the tail and lifting the hind end is all that's needed and not terribly stressful. They don't even need to be removed from the cage.

Size can be an indicator of age difference but most often times...the chinchillas are just different sizes. Depending on their genetic background and how they were raised (proper nutrition at an early age is essential for good growth) one chinchilla can be half the size of another.

 

[inzeos]

Going to sex them tomorrow or possibly this evening. They are currently sharing an FN-142 cage setup, which we have setup to not allow them to mix. Going to red up on birthing and chin babies just in case they've already mated if indeed they are mixed gender. I would rather be prepared than caught off guard. Before we picked them up we asked gender if known and whether or not they had been spayed or neutered.

 

[CJR]

They are both adorable! And how did you get the PetSmart manager to do that?? Was it a PetSmart online price, or from another place?

I hope they're the same gender... and I can't get over how cute they are! Very good catch!

 

[inzeos]

Sexing;

Grey Standard (?)

We believe the above represents male genitals? The end of what looks like it would be the penis or if I'm wrong urethra cone(?) seems to be darker than the rest of the area. Is this normal?

White w/ ?

We believe the above represents female genitals?

Pardon the quality of the photographs, my wife was using her camera phone while I was holding the chins. My wife is hesitant for good reason to learn how to handle and use my professional camera gear.

Regarding Petsmart, I printed out the price I found today $199~ USD from ferret.com (I believe) and also printed out the Petsmart.com policy on price matching. Their corporate policy is as follows;

PetSmart's Unbeatable Price Guarantee

Our Unbeatable Price Guarantee makes it easy for you to stock up on essentials (and surprises) for your pets.
In Store

We'll match any competitor's everyday or advertised price on an in-store, in-stock, identical product (excludes pets and services). See a store associate for details!
Online

We'll match any competitor's online everyday price for in-store, identical products. We cannot match sale prices or prices advertised on Ebay or other auction-type sites. Online Unbeatable Price Guarantee excludes shipping charges.

http://help.petsmart.com/no-hassle-return-policy/#guarantee

I showed the employee working the register my price print out, which I made sure reference the URL and the date and time of the print out. I showed her that the everyday price was indeed the price that I was asking them to match. I then showed her the print out from their web site. She asked for the MOD (manager of the day?) to come over to validate and match. The MOD gave me some trouble stating it was only for real local stores, I rebutted politely and showed her the actual policy. She said "we only match local prices, but today I will do this, don't try to do it again." At that point I declined to say anything else; however, I'm debating seeing if I can find someone at PetSmart corporate or a higher level up person to discuss this discrepancy, which is against their advertised

No Hassle Shopping

All said and done I got a good price on our 2nd FN-142 cage; however, I wish I could find a local non-corporate chain store or non-corporate independent web site able to provide similar pricing.

Feedback on the genders would be great btw!

Going to try and get a scale this week to try and get a weight on both of them. The grey chin is very small compared to the white one and even smaller compared to our existing black velvet chin named Cheecher's, we believe she is a girl also.

 

[RDZCRanch]

The standard is a male and the mosaic is a female, you are entirely correct. Since from what you said earlier they were already separated? Keep them separated and hope that the mosaic is not pregnant. Good luck and congrats again on two new cuties!:thumbsup:

 

[Ash]

You've definitely got the right sexes. Your standard is a boy, and your white is a girl. Good luck with the no-babies!

 

[inzeos]

Thanks for the confirmation! Glad to see that my wife and I have been correctly educating ourselves. When we received them they were together by the previous owners. We had them together for one night in our quarantine cage and now they both reside in their own private section of a new FN-142.

I'll dig around later regarding babies and pregnancy. However, are their any quick tell tale signs that she would be carrying?

 

[Parkerspetchins]

Not really, she will gain weight obviously and nearer the end of the ~111 day gestation period she will get elongated nipples and you may be able to see movement of kits in the last couple of weeks as well. Good luck!

On a side note, females are often larger than males, though chin weights vary greatly among both genders...)

 

[inzeos]

Just wanted to thanks for the continued feedback. The chins are doing well, we still have not come up with good names for them yet. Until then they will be known as rescue girl and boy!

Here are two new pictures, which I think express their initial personalities.

Rescue Girl

Rescue Boy

You can find more photographs of them here;

http://www.flickr.com/photos/inzeos/sets/72157622781858583/

Today we also introduced all three of our chins to the wonderful world of plain Cheerios. So far they seem to be a hit.

Both rescues are also loving their new perches. Last night after family dinner I slipped out into the work shop and put together six 6"x6"x2" perches for them. Each chin got 3 to start with. Today after work I'm going to fabricate at least two hidey huts and possible a toy bin or two. Once that is done I'm going to make them some longer perches, possible a 12"x6"x2".

 

[mishellyshel]

she looks like a princess.........snow white and he looks like Grumpy!!!

they are both adorable. i am sure you will come up with perfect names, sometimes it does take a while.

its funny about cheerios, only some of my boys like them! i wish they all would because it is a perfect small treat. they do LOVE their shredded wheat squares though. i usually break them in half though, as i would rather give them 1/2 every day or every other than a whole piece. ALL of them snatch them out of my hand like I gave them a golden nugget. some run and hide like Im gonna take it back! sometimes I feel like eating a whole bowl in front of them!! lol

 

[3CsMommy]

Name suggestion: He walks walls, and she's a total knock out, so Spider (Man) and MJ/Mary Jane!

You've done a great thing for these little ones. Thanks, on their behalf, for doing everything in *their* best interests, and congrats on the deal on that cage! Since she's probably pregnant, I'd suggest getting ready to keep a female kit if she has one, so she can have a cagemate without anyone having to go through a sterilization surgery. The boy might move in with your other guy, but intros can be tricky. Good luck and please keep us posted!

 

[inzeos]

We might be naming them Snow White and Grumpy or maybe Sleepy.

Although just now the boy surprised me, when I was seeing if he would accept a dust bath and another Cheerio he sniffed at the treat and then proceeded to walk right up my arm. He doesn't care for being held or restrained, which I can't blame him. Unfortunately the quiet room we use for our quarantine period really does not have the space to permit them to run or play freely.

I'm not sure how thrilled they are with their Mazuri feed either. I'm not sure what brand of food they were eating prior to coming to live with us. We received what was left of their food in a Tupperware container. I'm not sure how fresh the food was in there.

We may have to find them a new dust bath container though. When we got them the owners had the plastic Petsmart style container in the cage with dust all the time. The rescue girl seems to be trying to get the dust out of the container. I think they may have associated their dust bath as their hidey hut.

I've heard people have had success with glass fish tanks? I'm assuming that people are talking about the round "goldfish" style tanks that are flat on to sides? I think they are like a 1 or 2 gallon size?

 

[inzeos]

Name suggestion: He walks walls, and she's a total knock out, so Spider (Man) and MJ/Mary Jane!

You've done a great thing for these little ones. Thanks, on their behalf, for doing everything in *their* best interests, and congrats on the deal on that cage! Since she's probably pregnant, I'd suggest getting ready to keep a female kit if she has one, so she can have a cage mate without anyone having to go through a sterilization surgery. The boy might move in with your other guy, but intros can be tricky. Good luck and please keep us posted!

We are watching the boy closely since his size and weight suggest to me that he might be younger in age. Our first rescue was a female and to our knowledge (she was abandoned on a pet store loading dock) she was not sterilized. We are hoping that we can possible socialize in time the mosaic girl with our black velvet girl. We are not ruling out at this point like you have suggested keeping a girl from her kit if she is pregnant to be with her.

Both of the new rescue boy and girl have signs of nipping at one point at each others ears. The girl has a slice about 1/8" long out of one of her ears. None of the ear wounds looks recent though, no sign of scabbing, bleeding or other recent traits of a wound. I'm not sure if they did it to each other or if there might have been another chin involved.