Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Marip]

so here has started the hot weather and i wanted to know things that i can do for them i have tiles and shingles fresh water bottles with frozen water i don't release them now cause it's too hot i don't give them sand bath what can i do more?

[GrayRodent]

Giving dust baths will keep the fur from laying down and help keep them cool. Dust at night when it is coolest. Brush the pelt out with chinchilla comb to help too.

[lilchinchilla]

Air conditioning works well. Do you have an a/c? Not sure entirely where you are located, but I personally recommend a/c if it gets over 70 degrees where you are. Don't want to chance anything with heat waves or spikes in temperatures. 

[Marip]

Giving dust baths will keep the fur from laying down and help keep them cool. Dust at night when it is coolest. Brush the pelt out with chinchilla comb to help too.

but by rolling they will like doing "exercise" no? i already have a brush for rodents i will do that.

i live  in portugal i don't have a/c i just have a fan just to circulate tha air today there were 23 24 ºcelcius

[GrayRodent]

Better keep ice in there. That is dangerously hot. Unfortunately fans do not bring down the temperature for a chinchilla. Unlike humans they do not sweat to control their body temperature so a fan does not work. If you have a friend who has an air conditioner it might be better to keep them there for a while. How long have you had these chinchillas?

[chinclub]

I believe that equals 75 F  which is borderline too hot.  Unfortunately fans don't help chinchillas because they don't sweat.  Keep a bunch of tiles in the freezer and rotate them into the cage as often as you can. To you have some terracotta pots you can freeze these and then place them in the cage for him to crawl in so it is cold all around him.  You will need to trade them out often as they won't keep the cold for long. Freeze a bunch of water bottles and keep a few frozen ones in there at all times.  Blowing the fan over the frozen bottles into the cage might help.  Be sure he is in the coolest part of your house. I agree no exercise or excitement.

[GrayRodent]

Yeah, rolling in dust is certainly exercise you don't want when it is that warm. At night though what do the temperatures run there? I would think it would be 5C colder at night which should be safe for a dust bath. I am thinking 75 is dangerous because you might not know how high it can go on any given day.

If it gets to 27C your chins may not be able to recover from overheating. Terra cotta pots are a very good idea. See how cold they get with a thermometer as they might not cool on days with high relative humidity.

Be careful using your refrigerator to freeze bottles of water every day for weeks on end. The compressor inside of the refrigerator will be constantly running and may not be able to keep up resulting in spoiled food. The stress on your refrigerator could break it. This happened to my grandpa who was freezing bottles of water for a medical device he wore recovering from surgery. The refrigerator broke down about a month later. Use a thermometer in your freezer to monitor its temperature every day.

If you blow a fan over the cage make sure it is just enough to make the air feel cold around the the cold items in the cage. Too much air will make your cold tiles and ice bottles heat up too quickly. You can use a thermometer near the cage to help you determine how much air you need.

Hope this helps.

[mojito]

Another thing to do is to take a washcloth or towel and make it very damp then freeze it. Lay it over the top of the cage after that and keep rotating them. Hot air rises and when it hits the towel it will turn cold and go back down. It actually helped a lot and lowered the temp in my room ab 4 degrees before I bought an AC. Also using your fan, put frozen water bottles in front of it or frozen damp towels. Because the fan only circulates air (right now it's the hot air) laying a frozen towel over the front or back to turn it into colder air. These simple things really help and don't raise the humidity very much so it's safe (I gave an extra dustbath a week too just in case). Hope it helps

Also I had about 4 or 5 bottles I switched out so you can always have extras for hot hot days!

[lilchinchilla]

I would still strongly recommend an air conditioner. I haven't personally been to Portugal but I got to hear about how hot it was when my brother went there for vacation. 
I know where I live it normally does not get too hot, however a couple summers ago we had a really bad heat wave over 40 degrees celsius for about a week, and I had numerous chinchilla owners emailing and calling me because they did not have air conditioning.

Some chins I managed to help save by giving them emergency tips for heat stroke (and when the owners dashed out for an air conditioner.), but there was one owner in Vancouver who refused to do anything and lost five chinchillas due to the heat wave...another owner had to put his chin down as he suffered what seemed like brain damage after heatstroke and having seizures. 
Chins have fur coats and you have to understand they don't sweat like we do, to keep cool, and they do not pant like dogs do, to keep cool. They just cook in their little fur coats.

[Marip]

the bottles broke cause my brother told me that they didn't explode like beers so can i use plastic bottles? i dont know any one with  a/c and i can't afford one . i have towo chins for about 2 years and the other for less than a year.

The fan is big so i can't put it direct to one thing and they can't catch up with "wind" so who can i do that?

at night the temperature is a little lower like 20/21ºc but it's still hot

[GrayRodent]

Plastic bottles do not explode. Sometimes they might crack so check for leaks when you reuse them. Use a thermometer to measure the temperature next to the bottles in the cage. If it gets too warm (26C or higher) add more frozen bottles and watch for signs of heat stress in your animals. If you think your chin is overheated there are different things you can do to help bring it back. Perhaps someone can comment with specifics.

I would think 21C (70F) should be a (maximum) acceptable range for an active chinchilla but I could be wrong.

Sorry but I do not know what "catch up with wind" means. Please clarify.

If you've been doing this for two years then it sounds like your doing well enough.

[Butters]

Its pretty hot where I live too (Las Vegas) and I do not run the a/c all day due to electric prices, I will only run it at night an sometimes at the heat of the day if I must. I have found some good ways to keep my chinny cool, first I have moved his cage into my closet and close to the ground due to heat rising and the closet is nice and shaded, I put ice trays on top of his cage in the middle of the day, I put his chin chillers fresh from the freezer in his cage, I remove his wheel and I shut the closet door to keep heat out. I have yet to have a problem, during the day it stays around 75-80 in my home if it goes past 80 however I will turn on the a/c for my chins well being. Since you have no a/c you really need to watch your chins, and do not count on that fan for nothing.. keep them in the coolest place of the house, get some ice trays or even bags of ice on top of the cage during the day. If you get a few chin chillers or even some marble you can cool in the freezer and put it on the top floor of the chin cage then put the ice on top of the cage it will create a nice cool area for the chins.

[Marip]

today my brother told me my littlest chin was lying that she in two years never did and i'm a bit worried i moved her to my house cause she wasn't in my house .

catch up with wind i can't explain cause i don't know how to say in englishcan somebody help me?

yes i handle it for two years but know it's like too hot and it was sudden it came from no where.

[AnnieHank]

Maybe try google translate? translate.google.com

[Marip]

Maybe try google translate? translate.google.com

that's where that sentence came from lol it's like when there's wind they can't be there cause there's drsfts(by google translate) so i thought that they couldn't be directly with the fan

now it's like 10 degrees lower so it's very good i think they are stabilized.