vets - chinchillas

dontone

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

I'm not sure where you're quoting those figures from but I'm afraid a cage of those dimensions is far too small for a single chinchilla, let alone a pair. My daughter's hamster lives in a bigger enclosure than that!

The bare minimum size you'd need would be 6ft x 6ft x 3ft with several inter-linked levels for them to climb and exercise. They are very active little creatures and would soon become quite depressed in a small enclosure, just like the poor wee things you see in PAH

This link quotes those figures the OP stated previously

http://www.chinchillas2home.co.uk/cages.htm

And they get to run about too. TBH if the OP had stated that they had the PAH ones - I would have said no way too.

Doom_and_Gloom

I know they are active. I see that when they have out time. I can honestly say they act nothing like the poor chinnies you see in PAH.

My partner has agreed to let the chinnies have the explorer cage and get our rat a retirement cage anyway. We just need to make it suitable for them by getting some sheet metal as the bases in it are plastic - we won't let them have it before we do that. Eventually I would like to get the montana degu palace II small mamal cage. It is huge but that will have to wait. At least we are actually going to be giving them a bigger home. We aren't too happy with the size of cage they are in at the moment but it is adiquate (sp?).

Doom_and_Gloom

dontone wrote: »

Hiya

Glad you found it useful. TBH I posted all the advice because some people get chinnies and don't realise that they are different from other rodents like hamsters, gerbils etc and don't take their needs into consideration. I'm glad that you did what we did and read up about them before taking the plunge. It's nice to know :T
I was just trying to remember how much the treatment for my poor chinnie was and I think it came to £180 - £200. When you go to the vet and they are trying to find a price try and haggle with them as they will try to class your chinnie as a large rabbit (no way)
I comprimised with ours between medium size rabbit and guinea pig.
I forgot to say that you can buy special chinchllia cookies from some pets stores and online that my chinne loves. Also banana pieces (from the weigh shop) now and again.
Alafafa hay is popular too. As is cuttlefish and those coloured mineral blocks you can buy that attach to the cage and willow (already mentioned) - although the scraping sound is annoying lol. The first link I gave you is brill for all stuff like that.
Also do you have a marble plate for them? PAH sell them. It's a rectangle plate that cools them down it they get hot. About £5 but worth it.
HTH some more

I don't know why people don't read up on the animals they are getting to be honest. I even read up on mice and rats before I got them. Seems stupid not to really.

£180-£200 for treatment sounds fair. I will make sure they don't charge as if a large rabbit - I can understand your annoyance and why you comprimised to the size of guinipig/small rabbit. I have seen small rabbits of simular size to the chinnies we have actually.

We gave the chinnies a granite plate, it's one of the ones you buy as a heat protector for the kitchen. It was about £10 but is way over twice the size of the PAH plates. They seem to really like it and as it's so big both of them can sit on it at the same time :rotfl:.

kr15snw

I used to have chinnies and loved them Such cute little things.

I'm assuming you have them a dust bath? Mine loved theres. We also made him a little house as he liked to hide quite often