Chinchillas: care and maintenance at home

Active and fun chinchilla at first glance, like large mice, but these animals have nothing to do. Chinchillas have become popular for keeping in the home because of its simplicity, friendliness, intelligence and beauty.

They have beautiful eyes and thick, shiny, beautiful, radiating blue fur.

Pets are very clean, quickly get used to people and different energy.

Homemade chinchilla – description of the animal

In nature animals live in the mountains of South America, in the West of Argentina and in Northern Chile. As nor they use the rock cleft where out in the night. They can squeeze through even the narrowest of cracks, because their entire skeleton is able to vertically contract.

Nature has given dogs a certain appearance:

• body length from twenty to forty inches;
• big ears, through which animals are able to catch sounds at a distance and be aware of the approach of danger;
• tendrils-vibrissa with which animals are able to recognize and know the distance to objects;
• long hind legs that are longer than the front by about half;
• membrane in the ears during bathing, it closes the ear passages;
• thick, silky and soft hair in a length of about four centimeters.

Taking a chinchilla to content in the home must know that she has poor eyesight, so the pet can be fearful and nervous.

To navigate in space help him a mustache, and to hear the enemy’s ears.

For chinchilla house ought carefully to take care that the animal was not ill.

The fact is that these animals are not well studied, so not every veterinarian will be able to understand how sick the pet is and what to do with it.

How to care for a chinchilla at home

To the Pets in the house had grown, developed and multiplied, they need to ensure all the necessary conditions.

The air temperature

Contain the animals should be at a temperature in the range from +10 to +25 degrees. The house should not be too wet. Optimal humidity for rodents – no more than 60%.

If you keep pet at more high temperatures, the fur is going to be short and shabby, and he was fine. When grown at temperatures below 12 degrees, the animals get large, and wool is distinguished by the long hairs and thickness. Excessive cold or heat can even cause the death of the pet.

Do not be in a small cage lot of rodents.

When crowding increases the humidity and the temperature and the oxygen content decreases.

Deteriorating conditions for movement and rest of the animals, causing them appetite and slowed growth and development.

Light mode

Because all chinchillas are active at night, illuminance and daylight for them does not matter. However, the viability and physical development of the light they need. It does not matter natural or artificial. So the room can include dim lighting, which will create twilight.

Sunbathing animal is needed, but for a short time. They can be for a short time be placed under direct sunlight, but the day was cool. To make the fresh air cage with animals and ensure their sun baths are recommended in warm season of the year.

If the house is bright light, it should be muted. Otherwise the animals will bezvylazno to sit in their shelters. In bright light chinchilla feel uncomfortable, they lost appetite and disrupted livelihoods. If the room is exposed to direct sun rays, the window should be curtain curtains. Direct sunlight and drafts can cause illness in Pets.

The choice and equipment of the house for chinchillas

A lot of time caring for chinchillas at home does not require.

In the first place should be for them to choose a convenient cell and equip it with the necessary items:

1. Rodents of this species are mobile animals, so their housing should be spacious. For one pet selected cell with dimensions of 50×50 cm in length and width.
2. Chinchillas love to climb the bars and jump, so the height of the cell the more the better. Point is the recommended minimum height of 80 cm.
3. Inside the cell you should set a wooden house and a shelf. The selected house is spacious with a flat horizontal roof, but no floor. Fix it to the walls of the cage or floor is not recommended. If the pet can hide, then set the house it will be hard to get.
4. Feeder is selected in the form of a big bowl which is mounted above the shelf.
5. Chinchillas love hay, so it is put in a separate container. Don’t want your animals taken away the hay at his house, it is better to use a special Siennica. It should always be filled with hay.
6. The drinking trough for one animal must have a capacity of not less than one hundred milliliters. We recommend the use of nipple drinkers in the form of sealed containers with the nipple ball. They should always be clean and fresh water. Movable chinchilla water bottle in the Cup can easily be knocked over, and the floor in the cage will always be wet. Reservoir with a nipple water comes from in the mouth of animals and does not shed. For rodents it is better to use bottled or filtered water. It should be changed twice a day.
7. All animals love to bask in the sand, which they put a special container with high sides, with a volume of about ten liters. If the music is special designed for poultry is not suitable. A sand bath should be put in a cage every day for about 15-20 minutes. Bathing your pet will need about two inches of sand, which as a means of prevention from various diseases is added to Forestal or sulfur.
8. The floor of the cage was covered with wood filler or sawdust. They must not have any flavoring additives that can cause allergies in animals. Newspapers and paper as bedding to use in any case impossible.
9. All chinchillas are very intelligent and are easily accustomed to the toilet. They can put a special tray with sawdust or wood filler. But before that the cells will need to remove the litter, to pet get where he is now should defecate. The tray needs to be quite large, so that the chinchilla could easily fit in it. You can use the litter trays without a grate.
10. The cage should be equipped with twigs and chalk stone for the point of the teeth, which can be bought in pet stores. This stone and branches will distract the pet from the point of the teeth and damage to the house and the bars of the cage.
11. If the size of the cells, it is possible to set up pipes and hang the hammock.
12. As toy animals, you can give the shells of walnuts and wooden blocks, which they will love to chew.
13. For physical activity; you can set cross-country wheels, which must be solid. If the wheels are with the bars, the animal can easily damage the foot.

The cage with the chinchillas in the home is set away from drafts and heaters. The spot should not be pass and the house should not be exposed to direct sunlight. Every week the cage should be carefully cleaned and once a month, disinfection of the cell, all shelves, house, feeders and drinkers.

Care for fur

All of the chinchillas body covered with soft fur, who need care. Otherwise it will become dull and unattractive. Pets themselves smooth fur and washed, but they need help. To bathe in the water of the animals is impossible, because dry they will be long and could catch a cold.

That’s why the cage every day for a short time sets the container of sand. Prolonged contact with sand is able to dry the skin of the animal, in connection with which for a long time to leave the tub in a home with Pets is not recommended.

Highly contaminated fur clean with a comb or a wet towel.

The mode of the day

When the content and care of chinchillas should be kept in mind that this is a night animals who are hiding in their houses and sleep. So at this time of day it is better not to bother. To play with the pet in the evening, at dusk.

Not recommended to put the cage with the chinchillas in the bedroom or beside the bed. Otherwise, active nocturnal animals will not let you sleep.

What to feed a chinchilla

In the daily diet of Pets should enter the main feed in the form of compressed grass pellets, hay and cereals. Choose pellets at the pet store it follows from well-known manufacturers. Their composition should be free of preservatives, yeast and salt. Be an adult need in a day for two tablespoons of food. Constantly in the feed trough should not lie, after the animal ate the remains removed.

From cereals to chinchillas every day you can give a teaspoon of lentils, corn, buckwheat, Hercules, or of a mixture of 5 grains. About a third of a teaspoon of flax seeds, you can give your pet, who loves this delicacy.

The lure

It is very important to give your chinchilla the foodsthat are rich in vitamins and other nutrients. They are necessary for the normal development of the pet’s healthy teeth and beautiful fur. Fishing lures you can buy at the pet store and add one third of a teaspoon to main feed.

But do you make them yourself, satushev for this collected away from roads twigs and leaves of fruit trees, berries, alfalfa, nettle, peppermint leaves and dandelion root, mint, Melissa leaves, Echinacea, chamomile, plantain. You can give chinchillas dried fruit, green tea leaves and grapes, pumpkin seeds. Having prepared several options of lure, every day you give different.

The body of chinchillas on a large number of glucose is not calculated, so sweet food to overfeed animals is not recommended.

Features of the content of chinchillas

Rodents of this type requires special treatment, therefore their content in the home is not recommended:

1. To carry a pet on the street.
2. Release to walk around the apartment without supervision.
3. Bathing in water, chinchillas threat.
4. To feed houseplants and give fresh grass.
5. Use a harness for ferrets.
6. Take a pet that are not ready for it. Animals are very susceptible to stress, which can lose fur. To teach their hands chinchillas to be a child.
7. Loud talking, shouting or actively move or play near the cage. This can cause the animals fear. Therefore, Pets should be protected from small, active children.

Persistent adverse conditions and frequent stress can affect the health of the animal, to provoke hair loss, skin diseases and disruption of internal organs.

For chinchillas need proper care, quality food, attention and care. All this will be enough to pet growing up active and healthy.

At observance of all rules for the care, maintenance and feeding of chinchillas live in the home for more than ten years.