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[Squirrel_Butt]

Hello.

Last night I noticed Chip had a patch of hair missing from his tail on both sides, directly opposite of each other.  There is no redness or any scaling. he does not have a history of fur chewing. I have had him for a little over 10 years.  he has no signs of chewed fur on hsi body. Its just the coarse tail hair that is missing. I'm brining him to the vet this comming Friday. Could he be doing this from stress or boredom? I'm very worreid about him.

[GrayRodent]

Where on the tail? What does the skin look like? Could it have got caught in something? Is he housed with other chins?

[Snickerdoodlesmom]

Can you post a picture?

[Squirrel_Butt]

The skin  is normal flesh colored. the bald patcehs qare on both sides of his tail.. He is housed alone.  I cant get a good pciture of it as my bros camera has these wierd settings. I'll have to get an old fasioned camera and then scan the images to the pc. it will take time but i can do that

[GrayRodent]

In the last 6 days since your post have you seen any changes? Do you see any hair starting to grow from the area? Did the vet say anything?

If there is no new fur coming in by now then you might be seeing some kind of skin condition. But I'm not sure because I know this would be true of body hair but I don't know how fast tail hairs grow back. Because there is no discoloration of the skin my guess is fur slip or possibly shedding. But I'm no expert and hopefully someone who has seen something like this before will remark.

[lilchinchilla]

Is it possible someone may have pulled the fur out (if by accident) from the tail? The other thing and only thing I can think of - if it is bald with no fur, is that it is fungus. It takes a much longer time for tail fur to grow back than fur on the rest of the body. The first notice of fur growing back will be when the skin darkens slightly from the new fur growth coming in.

[Squirrel_Butt]

Ah sorry for the delay in my reply. I lost my password to the forum as well as the forum site due to a hard drive crash. Any way the vet said theres no doubt that hes been pulling the hair out himself. He gave me some meds with omega 3 acids in them to give him. I just have to puncture the tablet and put 2 squirts onto a shredded wheat.  I noticed he chews his tail more when he doesn't get the meds. Its likely dry skin asteh vet said theres no indication of a fungus.

[GrayRodent]

Chinchillas can pull their fur out when they get dry skin. Who would have thought? I'm glad it was something simple. I love this forum!

[Squirrel_Butt]

These pills were formulated for cats and dogs but  there is no such pill for the chins. the pills are intended to be ingested by the dogs and cats in whole, but for a chin a specific amount has to be squirted into the mouth. I choose to put 2 squirts on a shredded wheat as I don't want to end up getting the serum into his lungs