me and my husband have just taken in a chinchilla from a friend we are a bit worried about him but not sure as to where and what to do with him,

we have been told he is 8 years old, but to be honest he looks alot older when we got him at the weekend he was very shy for the first couple of nights then last night we got to have a good look at him, we had noticed that his fur is matted at the back and he has been pulling at it alot thought strange but may just be stress our friend said that this was his winter coat but it looks quite bad to me (will try and post a photo soon) also noticed his ears look really dry, the tip of his tail is totally bauld but tonight when we were over at the cage talking to him i noticed that he seems to be blind but im not sure his eyes are red and i tried to shine a light in his cage to see if he would react (blink) but he never tried putting my hand up close to his eyes against the cage and he never moved also tried giving him a treat through the cage and he seems to smell his way around

i really dont know to much about these lovely animals and i only want to do the best for him so any advice would be great, i am going to take him to my vet asap but due to the weather just now its a nightmare as my vet is a few miles away i really hope someone can help me


thanks alot for reading this

when chinchillas are stressed they "fur slip" which basically means clumps of fur fall out, its a defence reaction, if a predator were to grab their fur they can slip it and escape.

as for the ears, you can pop a bit of baby oil on a cotton bud and gently wipe them

what makes you think he is blind? i have 2 blind chinchillas (1 genetically and 1 with cataracts) they both cope fine and get around as well as my others

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his fur is not falling out its like its matted at his middle to his bottom end,

the reason i think he is blind is he does not react to anything visually stimulating he seems to smell his way about just really worried about the poor wee guy going to try the baby oil thing but to be honest i dont think he is use to much human contact, as i dont think he has ever been out of his cage and he has been fed through the bars with treats.

i know now after reading up on chinchillas that he has been fed a really bad diet (from what my friend told me he was being fed) so now trying to sort that out, going to try to get him to a vet next week fingers crossed the weather gets better so i can get him there,

thanks for the advice will give it a go and see how i get on, got a new cage comming for him tomorrow so hope he might feel a bit better in there. will try to get some photos of him on here so you can see what i am talking about with his fur

has he ever had a sand bath do you know? the fur could be in poor condition from lack of a sand bath, my blind chins do tend to get a few odd matts here and there, probably because they cant see them to sort them out, but their partners usually groom them out.
do his eyes look funny at all?

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