Actually, I'm going to disagree about Kaytee brand of hay, because of a recent event:
A couple of weeks ago I held my chin, despite the fact that he hates it, and I started panicking because hives broke out all down my arm where I had been holding him. I thought I had developed an allergy to him! I haven't had him that long, about 4-5 months, but this had never happened before when I've held him. Then i remembered i had gotten extremely ill the last time I had cleaned his cage. So I got logical and realized that allergies don't just suddenly happen so I figured it was something chinchilla related and probably something that had changed recently.
The likely culprits? The chinchilla dust or the timothy hay. After a few tests I determined that it was indeed the hay, and I broke out into hives and rashes consistently after touching it. "Well that's weird" I thought. I didn't have any problems for the first few months we had Hermes. Then after talking to my husband we remembered that the new bag of hay we had recently bought was not the same brand that we had before. We had been using Oxbow's western timothy grass, but had gone to Petco and bought Kaytee because of the couple brands they had, it looked the most fresh and crisp and green (probably because of the pesticides and chemicals used on it
).
Since that epiphany, I went back and bought the Petco brand of hay. It doesn't look as nice and is a bit dusty, but I stuck my arm in, swished it around a bit, stuck some in Hermes' hay box, let it sit on my hand for awhile before washing, and nothing happened. I didn't even sneeze.
I had a guinea pig before, and I would get sick after holding him or cleaning his cage. I had figured I was allergic to Yuki himself, and that the hay was only a mild irritant.. But seeing as we were using Kaytee back then (although I never got rashes from it..), I'm starting to rethink this.
My conclusion is that I am never using Kaytee hay again.. or really any of their small animal products probably. I have just found that generally they sell more low quality, overpriced and sometimes outright unhealthy products than many of their competitors. If it makes me break out in hives, how can I trust it to be healthy for my chin?
After I finish this bag of Petco brand, I'm going to stick with Oxbow pellets and hay unless a chinchilla expert tells me otherwise.