I am away on holiday and have found out that the people caring for my two chinchillas love them so much that they have bought two out of the paper. They have bought two girlies and I have two boys and they want to breed them. What age should the girls be and is it true chinchillas have small litters? I don't want to be stuck with not being able to rehome. Basically should I allow this to happen. The family have bred rabbits before and do take care of their animals well.

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unless you have full pedigrees for all 4 animals then you shouldnt breed them at all

breeding is NOT all fun and games, i have never bred, and never will, but have had 2 litters born here, one went perfectly fine

molly on the other hand, the pregnancy leeched the calcuim her body needed, to feed the growing baby, as a result her teeth turned to mush, producing milk to feed the baby drained her body even more, she needed dentals every 2 weeks!! i took the baby (luckily it was just 1) off her at 1 week old, and hand raised him, 2 hourly feeds, day and night, mums teeth started to harden after about 4 months, and after about a year and a half she ended up 12 weekly dentals, she was like that for about 3 years

then she started to get worse again, she had also developed root elongation, while the teeth were soft, which is where the roots grow though the bone, and it had got to the stage it was causeing her issues, she dropped down to 3 weekly dentals again, and we had to let her go

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Pedigrees in the chinchilla world are worth nothing unless you trust the breeder. There is no central registry (like the Kennel Club in dogs) and breeders write their own pedigrees. There was a case a few years ago of a big breeder (who also rescued) who chose the best of the rescues and gave them a pedigree when he sold or bred from them

I would not breed your pets together - it is not just a matter of putting 2 animals together when the female is in season as chinchillas need to bond with each other which can take weeks or longer. You will also need seperate cages to put the males in once the kits are born and cages to wean the babies into when they are 8 weeks old. If you have standard grey babies they are selling for as little as £25, so there is not much money to be made as most litters only contain 1-2 babies, sometimes 3.

If you are serious about breeding, check out chinchilla forums, talk to breeders and visit a chinchilla show and get as much advice as you can.