Chinchilla Illnesses

Common Chinchilla Illness Symptoms

Chinchillas are not like humans, they do not come tell you that they are not feeling well or are having a fever, so it is up to your keen eyes to find out if a chinchilla is ill. Like a most uncommonly domesticated animals, chinchillas can actually try to hide the fact they are sick, mainly because of their animal-like instincts to hide weakness. Here is the list of common symptoms, the sight of ongoing symptoms over a long period of time or multiple symptoms occurring at once should be handled by taking your chinchilla to an exotic animal vet ASAP.

Symptoms list: (Poli)

Red ears, indicating over heating

• Watery eyes
• Nasal discharge
• Wheezing (common breaths sound like someone is breathing through a funnel)
• Constant and furious pawing at mouth
• Constantly attending a certain body area
• Agitated behavior or complete disinterest in everyday routine (feeding, bathing, etc.)
• Red ears (ears are normally a dull grayish pink)
• Drooling or wet chin and chest area
• Loss in appetite (pet is not coming to feed or drink)
• Chewing out own fur (do not confuse with oral grooming)

Other less common symptoms include mucus-filled and smelly poop, and hunching over in corners. (Kundrotas).

How to treat an ill chinchilla (Kundrotas)

Some illnesses a vet can completely treat him/herself, but some others have to be treated over time by you with medication. When the time comes, you need to know how to do this. First thing is administering medicine. An easier way to provide medicine is by using the harness hold (mentioned in the last blog) and have somebody else gently provide a healthy feed or medicine via tiny spoon, or provide medical fluid via a syringe into a mouth. Make sure you gently provide the medicine or food when doing so manually to prevent messy eating and choking on food. For administering liquid medicine via syringe, put end of syringe next to a side of the chinchillas mouth, then push a couple droplets of medicine out at a time and the chinchilla sip it up; dry up any mess left around the mouth. Make sure your chinchilla gets constant dust bathes to fight off foreign invaders and constantly watch the chinchilla if symptoms worsen during treatment. The best treatment to a disease is prevention, as it is quite simple to prevent disease. Provide the chinchillas constant supply of hay, water, and dust bathes to keep them healthy; and constantly deep clean the cage to prevent infections in the chinchilla. Keep the temperature low in the area to reduce stress and keep other sick animals away from the chinchilla. 

Just take good care of your chinchilla and it will be VERY rare for your chinchilla to be ill, usually chinchillas get sick by lack of care from their owners, so just make sure they are living healthily in their home to keep them from being infected.




Poli, Miranda. "Chinchilla Disease and Illness." TIP OF THE MONTH!Chinchilla Chronicles, 2008. Web.   20 Apr. 2016. http://www.chinchillachronicles.com/chinchilla_sickness_disease_illness.html

Kundrotas, Andrea. "Nursing a Sick Chinchilla." Chinchilla Rescue. Forever Feisty Chinchilla Rescue,
Inc., 2003. Web. 20 Apr. 2016. http://www.foreverfeistychinchilla.org/nursing-a-sick-chin.html