All about Chinchilla lanigera

I bought mine from the Amish and they custom made the pans. I don’t know why the link won’t work, but search Bass Equipment. They are the company I’ve heard other people have bought them from. 

This is the link. Hopefully it works

https://www.bassequipment.com/Store/SCResult/230/Cage_Pans

I switched to the metal tray with wood shavings, as I really don’t like the fleece liners anymore. My chinchilla’s seem to stay cleaner with the shavings and I don’t have to clean as often. With the fleece I was cleaning once a day or else they smelled. 

This isn’t going to be a detailed how to because others have done a better job of explaining how to make these than I could. But I will tell you all you need to make these liners are pictured here.

(tutorial)

Total cost was probably around 20 bucks, maybe. I only did half the cage, so lets say $40 to do an entire two level Critter Nation cage, and that’s probably at the high end. I bought this fabric on sale at Jo-Ann’s Fabric (no-pill fleece is the only fabric considers safe to use). The remnants were 50% off and the swatch I bought let me do the entire one level with enough left over that I can probably make a hammock. 

When I was looking at ordering liners to do an entire double cage would have set me back around $78. I just couldn’t see spending that much on something my chins are just going to pee on. Plus I would have needed two sets. Overall it was more money than I wanted to spend at the time. 

Now you might be asking why even bother? Do my chinchillas really need fleece liners for their cage? Well no, but if they ingest too much plastic it can be harmful, and I promise you a chinchilla vet bill will cost a whole lot more than $40. One of the cheapest ways to cover the plastic is to use no-pill fleece, or you can replace the plastic pans with metal ones. If you have plastic shelves you can also replace them with wood ones made of kiln dried pine -- which they can safely chew on.

Even if you have a wire bottom cage it might be a good idea to look into using fleece to protect your chin’s feet. Wire can be very harsh on their little feet and may cause abrasions and cracks, resulting in something called bumblefoot... Which is not as cute as it sounds. It’s pretty much an ulcer on the bottom of the foot. 

Now what do you do if your chin decides to chew the fleece? Most won’t but occasionally you will find one that does. If you have a Critter/Ferret Nation cage you can buy metal pans and use some sort of bedding (my preference is aspen shavings, but I will go over safe alternatives in a future post). If you have a wire bottom cage you can make sure you have plenty of shelves and solid surfaces for them to get up off the wire. 

My girls in their new fleece covered digs. Notice I have a pie tin in the back of the cage filled with aspen bedding. They are actually pretty good about peeing in there. The same cannot be said of my two boys, who don’t care a bit about where they do their business. A cheap shallow glass pan would work better, because it is heavier and they won’t be as likely to knock it around. I just haven’t bought one yet. 

I didn’t say she didn’t use blue cloud, just from what I could see it looked like sand. Blue cloud is very fine and in the video I watched it really doesn’t look like blue cloud dust. Added to the fact the chinchilla in question is very greasy looking in most of its other photos, I assumed it was caused from using sand to bath in. BUT I didn’t say anything about it being greasy, because my focus was on educating others not attacking the OP. For all I know the chinchilla could just be naturally greasy, so I didn’t bring it up. 

I do my best to be unfailingly polite about these things, which is why I used the video to talk a bit about the proper dust bath materials. I didn’t say anything about it being wrong or attack anyone. I just said "The dust or sand that is being used looks a little course”. I’m not going around telling people they abuse their animals or what not. 

If I’m doing something that is wrong or might put my animal in danger I want to know about it. And I’ve posted like what 4 posts so far? I have posts for the future planned that will include pictures of my chins, similar to my first post about home made chinchilla toys which included pictures of my two girls. 

And why use photos from google when there are a ton I could reblog on tumblr? At least this way I can’t be accused of going behind someones back to critique them. If I see something that might be problematic I want the owners of the animals to know (i.e. the glass tank) and I want others who might be thinking of owning chinchillas in the future to know what is wrong or problematic.