I have a male chinchilla, Korben Dallas. A lot of recommendations about these animals were already given here, so I´ll just tell a little about him.
We adopted him, my brtoher-in-law didn´t want him anymore. We preferred to get him rather than some dumb person that doesn´t even know what exactly a chinchilla is. We´re the fourth owners, and I think the first two weren´t really good to him. So we try to do our best because he already have suffered a lot.
He lives alone, I know that the ideal is to have two, but I don´t have space for more. He lives in a 2-story-cage. We buy his pellets and the dust for bathing from a breeder. I hate this, but here in my city we don´t have any other option. But the breeder doesn´t kill them for fur, so I feel a little bit better about it.
Chins are great, but they´re harder to take care of than guinea pigs. They´re more delicate. Korben had a convulsion in the end of last year, it was midnight, no vets that attended 24-7 knew how to deal with chins and his vet could only be reached by pager (!) and we couldn´t wait, I got really desperate. He had a convulsion because of the hot wheater, his body got too much hot and he had a shock (in December here is summer, totally hot). My husband opened the refrigerator and stood with Korben in front of it to try to stop the convulsion. None of things we were doing were working and he would be dead, but we were lucky because I found a friend of mine online in IM, he´s vet, and he came to our house at that hour and helped Korben. I was crying so much.
He stood in our house until 2 am to get sure Korben was ok. Then, in the next day, we took Korben to the usual vet adn he gave him some medications.
So, everytime the weather is a bit hotter, Korben doesn´t go out of the cage, or just plays around in a room for ten minutes max. If he runs around the house too much in hot weather, he can get another convulsion.
Last month, he had a teeth problem. The teeth on the back of the mouth grew more than usual, and he couldn´t open the mouth properly. So he stopped eating. He would starve to death, and we took him to a vet dentist, who cut his teeth and now he´s 200% better. This is a problem he´ll have to live with for his entire life. And we´ll have to take him frequently to the dentist. My friend said this teeth problem is very common on domestic chins, because they eat much more pellets than hay, and it should be the opposite.
Chins are extremely cute and so loving, they play with you, want always to jump on your lap and stuff. But you need to really WANT to take care of them, pay attention to every detail and be prepared if they have any of these problems. I wouldn´t trade Korben for any other pet, and I want to adopt more chins when I can. But I know that they´re more difficult to pet than guinea pigs. We take our guinea pig to the vet just once a year, for a check-up. But for him, in these last 12 months I spent more with doctors than for myself, I suppose.
Food: Korben eats pellets, suplement, raisins (once or twice a week), dried apples, hay and a cereal bar from Vitakraft. And he has a lot of wooden toys to bite and maintain his teeth in the right size.
And the bath time is the funniest time for him. He loves it!
Oh! And we don´t let him have a floor time in the same time as Liloo, the guinea pig. They can fight. Frequently Korben wants to play with Liloo and she doesn´t, so she gets mad and wants to bite him. If they´re out of cages together, we have to keep both eyes all the time.
I have some pics of Korben (and Liloo also) here:
Flickr: Photos from danimadu
