Chinchilla Ailments, Diseases and other Issues.

Every chinchilla breeder will experience problems at some point and hopefully this will help you find answers to keep your herd happy and healthy.

Chinchillas are generally pretty healthy and robust little guys so long as they have access to fresh water, food and a cool environment with wood to chew. The most common health issues I see in pet chinchillas are diabetes from feeding too much junk, broken legs from unsafe caging and death from eating plastic or electrical cords. Diabetes in particular is increasing at an alarming rate as people feed their chinchillas things like dried fruits and raisins. Please feed them dried herbs or non-sugary items. Potato chips are not good either, they are pure starch!

To keep your chinchilla healthy they will also need a lot of items to chew on, hay, wood and dust rocks are a great place to start. You can find quite a list of items on Rondas Chinchilla's site.