Chinchilla Feeding Plan: A Complete Guide

By james

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Chinchilla Feeding Plan: Whether you’re a first-time pet owner or a busiest person, figuring out how to provide perfect feeding to your chinchilla, then this post is for you. Fortunately, paying attention to your chinchillas daily feeding schedule can help reduce some of the guesswork. Maybe you already have the necessary food supplies but you are not aware how much or how often you can feed your chinchilla? Or your Chinchillas Feeding plan lacks a balance of vitamin c and Calcium in it? So this post would help you in figuring out the best Chinchilla feeding plan used by many of the chinchilla owners in United States.

Chinchilla Feeding Plan

Many of the scientific reports suggests that Chinchilla owners struggle to create a balanced diet for their Chinchilla pets at Home. And it’s not because they don’t care for their Chinchilla pet. It’s just that there is no proper information or guidance available out there in the internet about the Chinchilla Feeding Plan, Chinchilla Diet Plan and others. And if you continue feeding the wrong diet to your Chinchillas then they may suffer from serious health issues.

A constant supply of chinchilla hay is highly recommended. Chinchilla Hay makes up most of their diet. Chinchillas’ digestive systems need hay and grass to stay healthy.

Chinchilla Feeding Plan: A Complete Guide

According to vet researches, 78% of Chinchillas in United States suffer from regular diseases like Obesity, Urinary tract infection, Bladder infections or Kidney Stones, Scurvy, and more due to a lack of a well-balanced diet. As a result of these health problems, your Chinchilla vet bills keep piling up. In order to help the Chinchilla owners I have come prepared a proper diet plan for the Chinchilla owners.

I along with my staff spend most of my time working on Chinchilla Guide from a while the rest goes towards the care of their Chinchillas. With just a year of hard work, we have created this wonderful blog to help all the Chinchilla owners out there.

In the process of raising our Chinchillas and interacting with groups of people in the community, we have soon realized that what most Chinchilla owners struggle with is the diet and food of our Chinchillas. So, we have spent over a month alongside a veterinarian friend of mine to create a wonderful book called “Chinchilla Care Guide” for you.

What You Will Get In This Book?

We have discussed everything about the Basic Diet, Chinchilla Feeding Plan, Balanced Diet for Chinchillas that a new owner struggle with i.e regarding hay, Vegetables, and Fruits for your Chinchillas. It includes topics like what are the best type of hay, how much hay should you feed and where can you source the same. We have also made similar topics in vegetables and fruits where we have discussed which vegetables they can eat, how often and tips to look out for.

Balanced Diet Plan for Chinchillas

We have discussed Vitamin C and Calcium balance in your Chinchillas diet. How much of these nutrients should they get and how you can supplement the same. We have also marked out a few mistakes that most owners make unknowingly.

We have created four well-balanced diet plans that you can follow and it will save you time and effort in the long run. It also makes things really easy for someone else like a caretaker(in your absence) or your kids to feed your Chinchillas with a proper diet.

Chinchilla Feeding Plan for Owners:

The information contained herein is very critical and must be followed.  Chinchillas require a low protein, low sugar, low fat, and high fiber diet.  It can not be stressed enough you must avoid any pellets that contain mixed forages, treats, or anything with bright colors.  These diets contain an absurd amount of junk food that have no nutritional value for your chinchilla and are of low quality. 

Chinchillas are unlike any other species.  They thrive on simplicity and simplicity only.  If you are unable to find a high quality chinchilla pellet, you may substitute it with a chinchilla-safe rabbit feed.  The following is a list of recommended chinchilla pellets and chinchilla-safe rabbit feeds you may use:

  • Oxbow Essentials (red bag) 
  • Mazuri Chinchilla Pellets
  • Brytin Professional Chinchilla Food
  • Kalmbach 17% Chinchilla Pellets (890KFI)
  • Hubbard Life Chinchilla Pellets
  • Sherwood Chinchilla Food
  • ​Blue Seal Home Fresh Show Hutch Deluxe 17 Rabbit Feed
  • ADM Pen Pals Show Rabbit Feed
  • Purina Show Rabbit Feed
  • Manna Pro Select Series Pro Rabbit Feed
  • Manna Pro Select Series Sho Rabbit Feed
  • Manna Pro Select Series Gro Rabbit Food

Always free-feed pellets to your chinchilla.  Pellets contain all of the essential nutrients, vitamins, and minerals chinchillas need to live a healthy life.  Do not under any circumstance limit the amount of pellets available.  Limiting pellets will cause an unhealthy eating habit called, “Binge” eating.  Unlike other animals, chinchillas do not gorge themselves and will only eat what they want until they’re satisfied and for this reason, there’s no need to limit the amount of pellets being offered.  Pellets should be given in either a ceramic, glass, or metal bowl.

Transitioning in Feed

When transitioning your chinchilla from one feed to another, it’s recommended to do so slowly.  To start, fill the bowl/feeder with 75% old to 25% new pellets.  Feed this amount for approximately 1 week.  After 1 week, mix 50/50 old to new.  Follow this for approximately 1 week.  Then, mix 25% old to 75% new for 1 week.  Finally, do a 100%, full transition to new feed.
 
Hay is a very important element in your chinchilla’s diet.  Hay provides additional molar wear for good dental health, but it also provides a lot of fiber a chinchilla needs in their diet, which is very important to keep the GI tract functioning.

Why Timothy Hay?

The most popular choice of hay among breeders and pet owners is timothy hay. Timothy provides a good balance of both soft and firm strands for chinchillas to forage through.  In addition to timothy hay, chinchillas may also be offered alfalfa, orchard, or oat hay.  If you happen to have allergies to hay, you may try hay cubes.  Hay cubes aren’t as dusty as loose hay and could be a viable option.  Hay cubes also provide an additional chewing surface for chinchillas to keep their incisors and molars naturally trimmed. 

Alfalfa hay does not cause the development of bladder stones in chinchillas. It does NOT affect chinchillas like it does other species.

Last but not least, let’s go over water.  It’s best for chinchillas to have bottled spring water vs tap water.  The reason being is because tap water, whether you have well or city water, can carry dangerous levels of bacteria, chlorine, and protozoa, such as giardia and cryptosporidium.  Do not use distilled water.  Distilled water has been stripped entirely of its natural minerals and will cause nutrient deficiencies and imbalances.

If you want to use tap water, you need to invest into a water filter.  Never give chinchillas tap water that hasn’t been filtered.

Chinchilla Diet dos and donts

  • Provide Hay and Water on regular basis
  • Don’t make changes in their diet all of a sudden
  • Make sure they’re eating and drinking every day
  • Chinchillas, like rabbits, are coprophages – they eat their own droppings. They do that in order to absorb additional nutrients so don’t discourage them from doing so.
  • Avoid fruits, high sugar eatables like nuts and seeds as they are very high in fat, which can cause serious health issues
  • Provide treats for chinchillas only in moderation

james

I have made this blog for sharing whatever I learned in my journey in the past couple of years so that you people can take advantage of the same. In this blog, you will discover numerous supportive tips to take care of your exotic petss, their sustenance diet, habitat, and so on.

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