Diseases and Disorders of Chinchillas

Table 1 shows selected diseases and disorders seen in chinchillas. If your chinchilla shows signs of illness, do not give it any medications unless prescribed by your veterinarian. Remember that with the appearance of any clinical signs, a qualified veterinarian should be allowed to make a definitive diagnosis. Identifying and treating diseases in their early stages are the keys to successful treatment and cure.

Disease or disorder	Clinical signs	Treatment and comments
Bacterial enteritis	Diarrhea; listlessness; dehydration; rectal prolapse	Nonspecific, including antibiotics, fluid replacement, and increases in dietary fiber; often fatal condition; usually due to unsanitary living conditions, poor diets, or abrupt dietary changes
Pneumonia	Breathing difficulties; swollen neck; nasal discharge; depression	Treat with antibiotics and fluids; improve housing conditions, including ventilation and temperature
Fur chewing	Fur on lower portion of body short, “lion’s mane” appearance (due to self mutilation); moth-eaten appearance (barbering by cage mate)	Possible causes include boredom, poor nutrition, stress due to poor husbandry, heredity, hormonal disorders, and/or fungi; separate cage mates to prevent barbering; offer fatty acid and/or zinc supplements
Malocclusion (tooth overgrowth)	Drooling; weight loss; loss of appetite; crooked, curling teeth; runny eyes; bleeding from mouth	Trim teeth under sedation; allow access to chew blocks or other chewing material to help “file down” teeth
Paraphimosis (hair rings)	Male infertility; irritation and swelling of penis and prepuce due to hair wrapped around these structures	Manually remove ring using sterile lubricant; check for recurrence monthly
Heat prostration	Rapid, open-mouth breathing; extreme weakness	Immerse in cool water; seek veterinary care immediately; can occur when environmental temperatures exceed 80°F, especially with high humidity
Metal toxicity	Weakness; weight loss; seizures	Caused by excess consumption of lead and/or zinc; usually secondary to chewing on galvanized metal or objects containing lead
Abscesses	Swellings on or beneath skin	Surgical removal or drainage; treat with antibiotics; usually secondary to injuries or bite wounds
Bacterial encephalitis	Seizures; incoordination	Caused by poor sanitation or food contamination; poor prognosis, even with treatment with antibiotics
Ringworm	Hair loss, dermatitis	Oral antifungal drugs; antifungal agent added to dust bath
Bloat	Reluctance to move; recumbency; lethargy loss of appetite	Decompress bloat using stomach tube; caused by overeating fruit or green feed; can also occur secondary to Enteritis
Constipation	Straining; unable to defecate	Increase fiber in diet; administer laxative (i.e., mineral oil) to facilitate passage
Conjunctivitis	Red, irritated runny eyes	Caused by upper respiratory infection or irritation from dust; treat with antibiotics (oral and/or topical); reduce the number of dust baths offered each week

Diseases and Disorders of Chinchillas

Table 1 shows selected diseases and disorders seen in chinchillas. If your chinchilla shows signs of illness, do not give it any medications unless prescribed by your veterinarian. Remember that with the appearance of any clinical signs, a qualified veterinarian should be allowed to make a definitive diagnosis. Identifying and treating diseases in their early stages are the keys to successful treatment and cure.

Preventive Health Care of Chinchillas

As with guinea pigs, routine vaccinations are not required for chinchillas, yet a routine annual visit to your veterinarian is highly recommended. Always pay attention to your pet’s behavior, eating habits, elimination habits, and physical characteristics. Notify your veterinar- ian immediately of any changes. Obesity can be a problem in pet chinchillas, so monitor your pet’s weight frequently.
As a rule, chinchillas are hardy creatures and rarely suffer health problems. Most unthriftiness and ill health seen are direct results of poor diet and poor housing conditions. Taking special care to ensure that these two husbandry factors are optimized is the best defense against illness or injury in chinchillas.
The chinchilla’s soft, velvety hair coat requires little maintenance aside from its dust baths during the week. Weekly brushing using a soft cloth is also recommended to help remove any obvious dirt and shed hair from the coat. Your chinchilla will enjoy it as well!
Chinchillas enjoy exploring their environments with their mouths and will chew to maintain their long incisor teeth at proper length. As a result, don’t allow your pet to roam the house unsupervised, as one encounter with an electrical cord or similar hazard could spell disaster. As mentioned previously, chinchillas that don’t receive adequate amounts of fiber in their diets are highly predisposed to serious digestive disturbances. Any abrupt changes in diet can also cause enteritis. If introducing a new food to your chinchilla, always do so gradually over several days. If diarrhea develops, contact your veterinarian immediately.
Hot, humid conditions can pose a definite health threat to chinchillas. The ideal environmental temperature for them is around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures exceeding 85 degrees Fahrenheit can quickly lead to heat stroke.

Reproduction of Chinchillas

The age at which chinchillas reach puberty depends on the time of year they were born. For example, chinchillas born in spring will often reach puberty 4 to 6 months later, whereas those born in the fall months can take up to a year to reach sexual maturity. Breeding season runs between November and May each year. Females cycle every 6 to 7 weeks during this time. When introducing male and female chinchillas to each other, always supervise the initial interaction. Females that feel uncomfortable with a potential mate can become aggressive and do much harm to him. This is especially true when a younger male is paired with an older female.
Gestation for chinchillas lasts an average of 111 days. A small nesting box containing straw may be offered to the pregnant female nearing parturition. However, when the time comes, she may simply choose to give birth directly on the floor bedding. The average litter size is two, although litters of up to five have been known to occur. Birth usually occurs in the morning hours. Newborn kits are born fully furred, with eyes and ears functional, and a full complement of teeth. Chinchilla kits are usually eating pellets as early as 7 days of age, although full weaning won’t occur until 3 to 5 weeks of age. Note that once parturition has taken place, the female chinchilla will enter into heat again several days later.

Nutrition Chinchillas

In the wild, the chinchilla’s natural diet consisted of grasses, shrubs, roots, and the occasional berry. Fortunately, special food pellets designed for chinchillas are commercially available and make feeding a balanced diet quite easy. It should be noted that chinchillas like to grasp food pellets with their forepaws and eat from their hands. As a result, the size of the pellet offered is important. Short pelleted foods are difficult for the average chinchilla to handle, and will lead to mal nourishment.
Pellets should be offered in a sturdy, hard plastic, metal, or ceramic food dish. Feed your chinchilla approximately 12ounce of pellets in the morning and again in the evening. In addition to pellets, you can supplement your pet’s diet with nuts, raisins, or dried cherries. However, such supplementation should not exceed 15 percent of your chinchilla’s daily dietary intake.
Because their digestive tracts are designed to ferment foodstuffs in the lower portion of the bowel, chinchillas require a good source of dietary fiber. For those kept as pets, hay provides the best source of this nutrient. The average chinchilla will consume up to one cup of hay per day. Chinchillas that are not provided adequate dietary fiber will develop potentially life-threatening enteritis. Hay racks should be hung from the sides of the cage and kept full at all times to help prevent such a problem. Finally, because a chinchilla’s teeth are in a constant growth mode, provide a hardwood chew block and/or tree branches (e.g., elm, maple, birch, apple, pear, peach) to help keep the teeth worn down properly and to satisfy the chinchilla’s desire to chew. Avoid branches from trees such as cedar, redwood, cherry, and oleander, as these can be poisonous.

Housing to Chinchillas

When selecting living quarters for your chinchilla, keep in mind the dry, cool climate from where your friend originated. Ideal environmental temperature for chinchillas is between 55 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures can drop to as low as 32 degrees Fahrenheit for short periods of time without ill effects as long as the humidity is kept low and the room is draft-free. Environmental humidity should be kept at 40 percent or lower. A humidity gauge attached to your pet’s enclosure can help ensure that this requirement is being met. Select a relatively remote, peaceful location within the home in which to place the cage. Since chinchillas are nocturnal creatures, distance the cage far enough from your family’s sleeping quarters so as not to be disturbed by your chinchilla’s nighttime activities.
Chinchillas need lots of room to move and roam in, so select a spacious enclosure. To prevent destruction due to chewing, your pet’s cage should be constructed of metal instead of wood. Chinchillas love to climb. Providing multilevel cages or shelving within a single cage would make your chinchilla extremely happy. The smooth flooring of the cage can be lined with aspen shavings or commercial rodent bedding. Cedar chips should not be used, as these can irritate the respiratory tract of rodents. Change this bedding at least twice per week to maintain proper sanitation. If you nplan on owning more than one chinchilla, they need to be housed separately, as chinchillas housed together within a confined space (especially two males) can become quite bellicose to one another.
Provide your chinchilla with plenty of places in which to hide and burrow. Wooden hide boxes, ceramic enclosures, or a 4- to 6-inch portion of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) pipe works great. Even better, an actual arrangement of smooth-edged rocks can be configured within the cage to create crevices and hiding places that simulate your chinchilla’s natural habitat. Obviously, make sure that the rocks are firmly seated and secured to prevent accidental injury to your pet from falling rocks.
Another important accessory you’ll want to provide your unique friend on occasion is a dust bath. In the wild, chinchillas clean their coats by rolling or dusting in volcanic ash found along the mountain slopes. The purpose of such behavior is to rid their special coat of excess oils. Captive chinchillas also need to roll in dust for the same reason. An 8x10-inch pan or dust bin with edges high enough to prevent dust from flying out yet low enough to allow the chinchilla to easily enter is ideal. Fill the pan with 2 to 3 inches of sanitized chinchilla dust purchased from a pet store. This finely granulated dust is the closest you will come to mimicking volcanic ash. Some experts use a home mixture consisting of 9 parts silver sand and 1 part fuller’s earth. Just know that regular sand or dirt won’t do the trick.
Offer your chinchilla its dust bath three times per week. Leave the bath in the cage for 1 to 2 hours, then remove it. Dust baths should never be left as permanent fixtures within cages not only for sanitary purposes but also because over bathing can lead to eye irritation. Dust can be reused if it is free from fecal or urine contamination when removed from the cage. Because chinchillas are creatures of habit, offer their dust baths on set schedules each week.
Both hay racks and water delivery systems should be mounted on the sides of the cage and kept off the floor. Be sure to verify the patency of such devices on a daily basis. The entire cage should be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized weekly.

Reastrain Chinchillas

Chinchillas are fairly easy to handle and require no special restraint techniques. They rarely bite when handled gently; however, they have been known to nip at a finger when frightened or startled. When picking up a chinchilla, grasp it gently at the base of the tail with one hand and scoop up the body under the belly using the other hand.
Chinchillas that are handled roughly can “slip” their fur, leaving large tufts of hair in the hands of the handler. This is a natural defense mechanism designed to leave potential predators with mouthfuls of hair.

Restraint Chinchillas

Chinchillas are fairly easy to handle and require no special restraint techniques. They rarely bite when handled gently; however, they have been known to nip at a finger when frightened or startled. When picking up a chinchilla, grasp it gently at the base of the tail with one hand and scoop up the body under the belly using the other hand.
Chinchillas that are handled roughly can “slip” their fur, leaving large tufts of hair in the hands of the handler. This is a natural defense mechanism designed to leave potential predators with mouthfuls of hair.

Chinchillas (Chinchilla lanigera, Chinchilla brevicaudata)

Chinchillas (Chinchilla lanigera; Chinchilla brevicaudata) are members of the rodent family and close relatives of the guinea pig. These fascinating creatures boast compact bodies; squirrel like tails; large, bat like eyes; pronounced, thin, erect ears; and, of course, the famous thick, soft, velvety hair coats. Chinchillas were once native to the high, rocky slopes of the Andes Mountains, stretching from Peru to the tip of Chile. The Chincha Indians inhabiting these slopes valued the chinchilla’s fur as clothing for protection against the bitter Andean cold. As Spanish influence spread across the South American continent, chinchilla fur soon became a valuable export item to Europe. As a result, chinchillas were harvested to near extinction up to the early part of the twentieth century. Today, Chile is the only country still harboring a native population of chinchillas, which is under government protection. Chinchillas first began to appear in the United States in the early 1900s, where they were and are bred and raised commercially for their valuable fur. As the demand for natural fur declines in the United States, more and more chinchillas are finding their way into homes as pets. As a rule, they are clean creatures and harbor little odor. Fun, active, and full of personality, they love to interact with people they know and trust. Chinchillas enjoy being petted and scratched and often emit a soft cooing sound when such attention is afforded them. Their long, heavily muscled hind legs enable them to sit up on their haunches while nibbling on a morsel, and hop around like a kangaroo when the feeling arises. Their acute sense of hearing can cause them to become easily frightened or startled when they are confronted with loud noises or high-pitched sounds. When frightened, a chinchilla may let out a cry and scurry for cover. In fact, if the fright turns into anger, this cry could actually turn into a surprisingly belligerent bark or growl.
The standard chinchilla is blue-gray to dark gray in color, although mutant color variations do exist. These include charcoal, black, brown, beige, and white. Chinchillas weigh in at approximately 400 to 800 grams (with females often weighing more than males) and average about 14 inches in length from head to tail. Their lifespan in captivity averages 10 years, although there have been reports of some living to be 20 Years.