I am a small pet shop owner from Southern Michigan, recently I had a customer contact me because her chinchilla was pregnant when she bought it and the mother lost the baby and now she is not eating and has become anti-social.
Is there anything I can tell the owner to help the mother through this process?
The baby was born about 3-5 days ago and died 1-3 days ago.
The mother was not producing milk, they contacted a vet and were told to try to feed the baby syrup because it was going into hypoglycemic shock. They took the baby and tried but were unable to keep it alive. They took care of the dead baby and performed a funeral, but I suspect the mother chin thinks her baby is still alive because they took it before it died and didn't show it to her after the fact.
After losing the baby the owners contacted a veterinarian and were told to clean and sanitize everything to get rid of the smell and to keep the mother away from the place where the baby was born.
Today they contacted me and told me that; the mother is now losing hair, has become snippy and bitten the owners daughter (which she never did before), is not eating, is tearing up her cage and making a mess of it and has been trying to get out of the cage to get back to the place where the baby was born.
Any information that you could pass along would be wonderful. Will the mother recover from this or could they end up losing the mother too?