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[andrdfry]

Hello, my name is Eric. My gf and I are thinking about getting a Chinchilla, she has always wanted one and i been looking them up and listening to her talk about them so we think we will be wanting one very soon. We use to own rats. We bought them at Petsmart and we were told after the fact that Petsmart isnt a good place to get pets because they dont take care of them and are prone to more problems. So are rats died on us recently so we want to replace the void of not having a pet we can take care of.

So, for me im always wanting to buy my animals affection, what things to do you recommend getting Chinchillas, we already have a big cage which we kept our rats in, we changed it around some to give it more room and im pretty sure our chinchilla will like it.

What are some things we should know about owning a chinchilla?

We have been looking around our area and not having much luck at finding chinchillas, where would we go about getting one, we live in Thousand Oaks, California, its in Ventura County.

Any and all advice woudl be great, thank you.

[GrayRodent]

Rats are far easier to tame than chins as adults. If you want an affectionate chin I highly recommend getting one from a breeder as a kit and work with it every day. Even if you get an adult that is not all that tame and set in its ways they still make nice pets but for the right person. They don't like to be handled like rats do but they'll still be affectionate in their own way. Some chins do like that but it takes work to get them to that point.

I found a local breeder by googling and calling around although I ended up getting a rescue from an online classified ad. The owner said he came from Petsmart but I think it was petco cause all his stuff was petco brand. Anyway there is a higher risk of congenital problems that could crop up because pet store chins tend to be breeder's rejects.

This one has good potential and behavioral characteristics that I find very desirable but it will still take some work before he'll let me handle him. Most do. If you are not as hands on with them that's fine too. If you let them out they tend to to return to their cage (once they are acclamated to their new home) but takes some doing if you ever need to catch it.

There's some information at this site that can help. There's a link to a free PDF download there for a basic care manual.

http://www.huggablepets.com/huggablepets/freebook.shtml

There's also some interesting stuff on the board where you can see a variety of opinions on things. If you become a Chinchilla Club member you are also given access to a lot of documentation that you might find helpful. There is a breeder directory here but it's not always up to date.

http://www.chinchillaclub.com/breeder/

As far as buying affection I think I discovered that you can. But it's important you get them things that are safe. Also the less food treats you give them the better. They have extremely delicate digestive systems and too much or the wrong stuff can kill. I gave a pretty detailed story of my first chinchilla (I got him two days ago) here that I hope will be helpful for readers like yourself:

http://www.chinchillaclub.com/forum/index.php/topic,3895.msg29692/topicseen.html#new

Have a blessed day

[Snickerdoodlesmom]

Disinfect the cage thouroughly with a vinegar/water solution or a commercial small animal cage cleaner.