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1

Q & A / Can house mice be dangerous to chinchillas?

« on: January 03, 2014, 01:53:00 PM »

Hello there,

We live in a ground floor flat and have recently discovered that we have mice. We have completely cut off their food supply, making sure they have no access to even crumbs on the floor, and we have started to block off where they are coming in. We are setting humane traps tomorrow so hopefully they work and the problem will be solved ASAP. However, last night I'm pretty certain there was a mouse or mice stealing food and bedding from the bars of our chinchillas cages. Could they have passed on any kind of infection to our chins? Would chinchillas usually scare mice away? Has anyone had a similar experience? 

Any advice you could give me would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

2

Q & A / Chinchilla spends a lot of time hiding.

« on: May 21, 2013, 08:09:42 PM »

Hello there,

I got my first chinchilla (a little boy called Barley) in December last year. He is almost 11 months old. He's doing very well health wise and is generally a very happy little chinny. However, ever since we got him he has been spending a lot of time hiding whilst he is out of his cage. Basically when we let him out, we have to take our bed apart, because if we don't he just spends the whole time under the bed and It's a struggle to get him back in his cage. So what my boyfriend and I do, is we put the mattress down on the floor and stack the two parts of our bed up against the wall in our room. Barley can spend up to an hour just hiding behind them, staring at the wall or in to space. It seems to be in a strange pattern though, as soon as he gets out he runs straight to hide behind it, plays around for a little while, then spends the rest of the time hiding behind the bed again. Should I be worried about this? I'm desperate to get some more interaction with him and I'm aware that this takes time and a lot of patience, but he still wont allow me to pick him up, so it's always a nightmare to get him back in the cage again. He sits on my lap sometimes and some days he'll sit for ages and let me pet him, but he just seems to spend far too much time hiding. Our room is quite messy, not dirty, just full of things like boxes, clothes and photography equipment (my boyfriend is a photographer) so I'm wondering if the fact that things are quite cluttered is what's causing him to hide a lot of the time. We're in the process of finding a new flat so when we move in to our own place the plan is to keep Barley in the living room, hallway or even a spare room if we're lucky. We currently share with two other people so It's not possible to do so in our current flat. I'm wondering if we have more floor space and less things cluttered about the room that he's in, that it will maybe encourage him to have more interaction with us, as there will be less for him to run and hide behind.

Should I be worried that he's hiding a lot of the time? Or has anyone else experienced this with their chinchilla? I just want to make sure he's happy and not doing this because he feels depressed. He gets out of the cage to run around and play every single night for at least three hours, if not more. So I can't see how he would be doing this because he's unhappy. Just worried about my wee guy!

3

Q & A / New Chin Owner

« on: March 28, 2013, 06:40:13 AM »

Hello,

I got my chinchilla, a little boy, (Barley) in December. After years of wanting a chinchilla, my boyfriend bought me one just in time for Christmas. We did a lot of research before getting Barley, and since we only bought him, we make sure he gets constant love and attention. Barley gets time out of his cage for three hours almost every single night. The only time he doesn't get out is on the rare occasion that we're away for the night or up early for work the next day. He has a big cage full of toys for him to play with. However, he's recently been biting at his cage as soon as we put him back in for the night. I'm worried that our constant attention is not enough and we have decided that we'd like to get another chinchilla. However, we cannot afford to do this right now. Barley is now eight months old. Is there a time limit on when we can get him a companion? We're already aware of the process we have to go through to gradually introduce them to each other, we're just not sure if there's a time that we have to do this by. If anyone could give me any advice I'd really appreciate it.

Also, one other question. When Barley is out of his cage, he spends a lot of time hiding behind the bed. He seems to have a thing about just standing upright next to the wall. Is this common? He seems perfectly happy, I'm just not sure if this is normal chin behavior.