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[LYChinchillas]

Hi all,

I have a general question for everyone..

Would you feel like it's inappropriate to post a video of my chinchilla grooming his penis? I have been working on a video blog and website, and I'm not really sure. It's definitely a part of chin grooming and maintenance, and pretty rare for people to see regardless of being a chin owner or not, and is surely natural for chinchillas. However, I feel like most people viewing it would be very grossed out and squeamish.

I'm on the fence. Thoughts?

[GrayRodent]

Personally I'd prefer not to see that on tape but if it's in the context of health and care for chinchillas I don't think it's inappropriate long as you have a good reason behind it. I take a somewhat guarded approach but I know there are others who are way worse.

It's really not rare to see. I've seen both my chins do it about twice a day as part of their daily routine. Of course I live and work next my chin's cage so I see pretty much all of his daytime behaviors. Interestingly enough they are pretty much in sequence at the same times of day.

If you do show it I recommend discussing hair rings. Sometimes they can lead to life threatening infections. Males in a ranch run breeding program will develop them more frequently and should be checked periodically. Not so much for pets but I've seen it occur on the boards a time or two. It usually occurs in older pets who don't groom themselves as much as they should.
Someone who's skilled with chins can typically fix the problem but for the average pet owner it's best for the vet to take care of it.

Another thing you might like to point out if you have a good video is why it's important to keep cages spaced 3 inches apart to separate males from females because they can mate through the bars.

[LYChinchillas]

Personally I'd prefer not to see that on tape but if it's in the context of health and care for chinchillas I don't think it's inappropriate long as you have a good reason behind it. I take a somewhat guarded approach but I know there are others who are way worse.

It's really not rare to see. I've seen both my chins do it about twice a day as part of their daily routine. Of course I live and work next my chin's cage so I see pretty much all of his daytime behaviors. Interestingly enough they are pretty much in sequence at the same times of day.

If you do show it I recommend discussing hair rings. Sometimes they can lead to life threatening infections. Males in a ranch run breeding program will develop them more frequently and should be checked periodically. Not so much for pets but I've seen it occur on the boards a time or two. It usually occurs in older pets who don't groom themselves as much as they should.
Someone who's skilled with chins can typically fix the problem but for the average pet owner it's best for the vet to take care of it.

Another thing you might like to point out if you have a good video is why it's important to keep cages spaced 3 inches apart to separate males from females because they can mate through the bars.

Thank you so much for the feedback and input - very much along the same lines I had been thinking. I had planned on discussing hair rings but I will be sure to include the cage tips as well

It must be so awesome spending enough time with your chins to know their daily routines - I work largely from home as well and my chins are hard to predict when it comes to grooming! 

[GrayRodent]

I only have one chinchilla so maybe that's why it's less chaotic. He grooms his fur a lot and it's very easy to coax him by petting him under the chin. He seems to groom his male parts almost exclusively in the evening though. He does seem to have a routine and it's more pronounced when my routine is steady which lately it hasn't.

In the evening he'll spend a great deal of time grooming all over way more than during the day. Then he'll go back to sleep until about 9:00. When I go to bed and turn all the lights out he'll get on his wheel and start running. Usually I'm asleep in less than an hour after that but I have a wheel counter that reads around 3000 revolutions by morning.

By the time I get up in the morning he is asleep and I'll play with him. He'll be very awake and active for about and hour and go back to sleep and be groggy until noon. Then he awakes and starts chewing on his toys. He does get up periodically to eat and groom for about 5 minutes and then goes back to sleep. After about 3:00 he is soundly asleep and doesn't want to be bothered until sundown. I'll usually take him out again after dinner at around 6:00. At first he'll kack and get vocal but he settles in within seconds and he'll be very docile, probably half-asleep, and will cuddle and fall asleep on my arm if I let him. After sundown he starts grooming himself thoroughly and when 9:00 comes around he starts pooping everywhere and I don't like to have him out because of that. He's also rambunctious and doesn't like to be restrained. I'll play with him in his cage and he'll chase things around like paper and toys kind of like a cat. He seems to be that way well past midnight and he's asleep again after about 3am and makes no noise.

That's pretty much Kulu's routine.

[LYChinchillas]

I only have one chinchilla so maybe that's why it's less chaotic. He grooms his fur a lot and it's very easy to coax him by petting him under the chin. He seems to groom his male parts almost exclusively in the evening though. He does seem to have a routine and it's more pronounced when my routine is steady which lately it hasn't.

In the evening he'll spend a great deal of time grooming all over way more than during the day. Then he'll go back to sleep until about 9:00. When I go to bed and turn all the lights out he'll get on his wheel and start running. Usually I'm asleep in less than an hour after that but I have a wheel counter that reads around 3000 revolutions by morning.

By the time I get up in the morning he is asleep and I'll play with him. He'll be very awake and active for about and hour and go back to sleep and be groggy until noon. Then he awakes and starts chewing on his toys. He does get up periodically to eat and groom for about 5 minutes and then goes back to sleep. After about 3:00 he is soundly asleep and doesn't want to be bothered until sundown. I'll usually take him out again after dinner at around 6:00. At first he'll kack and get vocal but he settles in within seconds and he'll be very docile, probably half-asleep, and will cuddle and fall asleep on my arm if I let him. After sundown he starts grooming himself thoroughly and when 9:00 comes around he starts pooping everywhere and I don't like to have him out because of that. He's also rambunctious and doesn't like to be restrained. I'll play with him in his cage and he'll chase things around like paper and toys kind of like a cat. He seems to be that way well past midnight and he's asleep again after about 3am and makes no noise.

That's pretty much Kulu's routine.

He sounds great! How old is Kulu and how long have you had him? Also, what type of programming do you do?

[GrayRodent]

I've had Kulu for about 2.5 years. I got him from a breeder when he was 12 weeks old that had some Lowcountry Chinchillas stock they were breeding. Before I had Kulu I had another chinchilla I bought off craigslist. Long story short he was not healthy or friendly and I had to euthanize about 6 months after I got him. There's nothing like getting your pet from an experienced breeder.

I began programming in visual basic to create some MSOffice macro based applications for Access, Outlook, Excel, and Word and scraped something together for a company that I was working for. From there I started playing with Actionscript to help Jamie, the previous Chinchilla Club owner, improve on some mini-games and learn more about programming games. I didn't get very far with that because I got pulled into developing for virtual chinchillas which is php/sql based. I produced some functions and code to improve v-chins that proved to be very successful. They were all procedural methods so it all seems obsolete now that I'm learning the object oriented approach.

Now I'm learning web development which is php/sql/pdo, html5/css3, javascript/jquery, and the internals of apache servers. I had some exposure to these things but now I'm focusing on best practices and modern design techniques.

I've been at it so long and hard now that I'm having really strange dreams at night. So I do use the term 'programmer' loosely. Programming is my role on our website as opposed to my profession, which is 3d illustrator, but I don't doubt that web programming is going to become a major part of what I do professionally very soon.

[LYChinchillas]

Wow I'm sorry to hear about your other chinchilla - that's a very sad story. I'm glad you found it in yourself to get Kulu. ^_^

As far as web dev - sounds awesome! I actually am part owner for a 3D design firm and in my spare time my boyfriend and I are creating a simple first person shooter game from the Blender render engine, and are eventually looking for someone to code the game into a web or mobile platform - a standalone so users don't need a plugin or any additional downloads - would you have any experience in this?

[GrayRodent]

When my first chinchilla was dying (I saw it coming for a while) I knew I wanted to get one from a breeder that was freshly weaned and I plan on doing it again when Kulu goes, which should not be anytime soon. I don't know if I'll ever be without a chinchilla. Don't know how I got along without one!

Blender is my weapon of choice for 3d graphics but my expertise is illustrating for diagrams, logos, and still images.
As far as programming I still have quite a learning curve ahead of me and I plan on using chinchilla club and v-chins as my learning experience for web dev. It's probably going to take half a year and that may be optimistic. At the very least I want the experience of building it from the ground up. After that I might feel more comfortable doing cross-platform application work but at this point it's a big if.

like

Code: [Select]

if($chris_ever_gets_it){//I might continue}else{//I'll be so burned out I'll never look at source code again}of course for blender it would be

Code: [Select]

if: i_ever_learn_python
#that would be pretty cool
else:
#see a blender artist shoot himself in the foot
Finding a cross platform solution for gaming is tormenting. Adobe flash was pretty nice until mobile devices stopped supporting it. HTML5 is promising but it's not fully implemented yet. Executable files require graphics APIs which are now so fragmented (windows xp, 8, mac, ios, android, linux...) it makes my skin crawl just thinking about it. I can understand why game devs get paid big bucks and game programming tools are very expensive too. I hope the BGE compiler is able to do the heavy lifting for you without mangling your software. That would probably be too good to be true though.

[LYChinchillas]

Haha! Well, may still reach out once the game's ready to go and see what kind of input you have. The code you have there looks pretty advanced  Cheers!

[LYChinchillas]

Okay you guys - here it is! http://youtu.be/9LVnDsbn2q0 I've (wo)manned up and uploaded, providing an informative blurb as Chris suggested about hair rings to prevent it from being seen as unbearably inappropriate.