Chinchilla Community Forums
Chinchillas => Health => Topic started by: sarahlydear on March 12, 2011, 08:33:04 PM
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I read somewhere, can't remember where, that you have to watch how much cardboard you give your chins. I hadn't ever really thought about that but I guess it makes sense. I'm anxious to know because my second chin, Tuvok, has had a poop change. His have always been smaller than Herby's but now they're really small; though still soft/firm and healthy looking.
To give you an idea of his situation he recently broke his cage and I'm in the middle of making him a new one just waiting on shelves; so now he's in the boy's playpen and did infact have quite a bit of cardboard in there with with him: a large cardboard box, 2 cardboard tunnels and some wood chews with pine shavings for bedding. After reading that I took out one of the cardboards tubes put another wooden house in there, though he doesn't like to use it he just stands on it, and put a piece of board on the bottom of the cardboard house. I've also but alot more wood chews in with him so hopefully he doesn't chew the cardboard as often. Another thing his hay was on the ground and he was refusing to eat it, but now it's hanging and he's eating more and I think his crap is getting a bit bigger...but I want to be sure of the cardboard thing to know if I should start watching that. Herby and Tuvok are pretty much always around cardboard and have some to chew on. Thanks.
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Most of the time when a chinchilla chews they do not ingest much. Small poops I would be checking his water intake. Is he getting enough water?
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i had heard that before myself.
are you sure he's eating enough hay. i know my bo doesn't eat hay at all for the most part, but once in awhile he does and when he does, his poops are bigger.
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When the incident happened he pretty much stopped eating and drinking regularly. Now he seems to have regular, good water intake and the bottle is steadily going down, maybe not as fast as I like but still steadily, and he had pretty much stopped eating hay but now he's getting back in the groove and eating more. Right now I'm just going to wait it out for a bit more because I know it was a big change and he hates his "new cage" and since things have started to go back to normal, intake wise, I just wanted to know if the cardboard was hindering or not really doing anything.
Thanks for the input though :)