Well I have a few different pets from degus to chins to hamsters to gerbils, mice and rats! :lol: x
A few of them are 'getting on' a bit now but we love them all.
I thought I'd introduce a few at a time so as not to overload the forum too much, lol.
So here's my gorgeous chinchillas...
Betsy is a single chinchilla. She came to me in a pair but sadly her beloved Bob died of maloclussion.
I then got a neutered boy from the same rescue she had originally come from to pair up with her but though we tried various methods to pair her up she wouldn't accept him and started to really bully him so that he became terrified of her and so we ended up giving up and she lives alone - not ideal but she seems happy enough. She is a real *madam* and lets us know exactly how she feels about things! :lol:
Her old cage was a bit 'rattly' and when she knew 'the other chins' were out she would shake the front of the cage at them in anger! She now has a new cage and she can't do that anymore.....
We love her though 'cos she's such a character x
Here's my Betsy (black velvet chin) and her cage:
As the pairing with Betsy had failed; we now had a lovely little neutered boy all on his own. Deciding what to do wasn't easy as we didn't want to risk having three lone chinchillas but Chewy was so lonely and miserable it was a necessity to try. Feeling rather nervous from past experience we ended up buying a chinchilla from a local *very* small-scale breeder as a companion for him - she was a baby and we hoped that it would therefore be much easier to try her with Chewy as she had no dominance issues and would have come from being with her mum.
So we did things a little differently this time and kept them in cages that were not even in the same room and intro'd only on strictly neutral territory. Chewy was wary of this happy, bouncy baby girl and sometimes reacted very defensively to her overtures and occasional attempt to boss him. I became quite worried about it all and very stressed but then one day Chewy knocked the partition down we had been using to keep them in neutral territory and ran into 'his' room (the pet room). Snowy followed and as she was now in *his* territory she was the anxious one. Chewy took charge of her and proudly led her round the room......and right into his cage! I had cleaned the cage and it was stripped of all but the essentials. I watched them for ages before I could get up my confidence to leave them overnight but they seemed fine. The next morning they were snuggled up together and I cried at how happy Chewy finally looked.
So here's our inseperable lovebirds!
This is where they live:
Chewy in his dustbath:
Chewy and Snowy are very cheeky chinnies - they enjoy ripping wallpaper and eating walls so in the pet room we now have hardboard a good metre high on the walls to protect them a little bit.... but they are great fun to have around xxx
A few of them are 'getting on' a bit now but we love them all.
I thought I'd introduce a few at a time so as not to overload the forum too much, lol.
So here's my gorgeous chinchillas...
Betsy is a single chinchilla. She came to me in a pair but sadly her beloved Bob died of maloclussion.
I then got a neutered boy from the same rescue she had originally come from to pair up with her but though we tried various methods to pair her up she wouldn't accept him and started to really bully him so that he became terrified of her and so we ended up giving up and she lives alone - not ideal but she seems happy enough. She is a real *madam* and lets us know exactly how she feels about things! :lol:
Her old cage was a bit 'rattly' and when she knew 'the other chins' were out she would shake the front of the cage at them in anger! She now has a new cage and she can't do that anymore.....
We love her though 'cos she's such a character x
Here's my Betsy (black velvet chin) and her cage:
As the pairing with Betsy had failed; we now had a lovely little neutered boy all on his own. Deciding what to do wasn't easy as we didn't want to risk having three lone chinchillas but Chewy was so lonely and miserable it was a necessity to try. Feeling rather nervous from past experience we ended up buying a chinchilla from a local *very* small-scale breeder as a companion for him - she was a baby and we hoped that it would therefore be much easier to try her with Chewy as she had no dominance issues and would have come from being with her mum.
So we did things a little differently this time and kept them in cages that were not even in the same room and intro'd only on strictly neutral territory. Chewy was wary of this happy, bouncy baby girl and sometimes reacted very defensively to her overtures and occasional attempt to boss him. I became quite worried about it all and very stressed but then one day Chewy knocked the partition down we had been using to keep them in neutral territory and ran into 'his' room (the pet room). Snowy followed and as she was now in *his* territory she was the anxious one. Chewy took charge of her and proudly led her round the room......and right into his cage! I had cleaned the cage and it was stripped of all but the essentials. I watched them for ages before I could get up my confidence to leave them overnight but they seemed fine. The next morning they were snuggled up together and I cried at how happy Chewy finally looked.
So here's our inseperable lovebirds!
This is where they live:
Chewy in his dustbath:
Chewy and Snowy are very cheeky chinnies - they enjoy ripping wallpaper and eating walls so in the pet room we now have hardboard a good metre high on the walls to protect them a little bit.... but they are great fun to have around xxx
