Introducing Chinchillas Slowly

Video Transcript

"This is Lauren on behalf of Expert Village and this is "Introducing Chinchillas Part Two: Them Living in Pairs". Chinchillas have to be introduced pretty carefully. They can be aggressive, territorial, and in the beginning, middle or end of a heat cycle, all of which can affect them pretty greatly. There's two ways to introduce a chinchilla. There's the gradual way and then there's people who will force them to be together. I've seen both done. Both work and fail. The slow introduction is done by placing the two chinchillas side by side for some time. I'll sometimes take a chinchilla into the bathroom and have a carrier there and one of the chinchillas will be inside the carrier, the other one will be out running around. Pretty soon, sooner or later he'll run up to the other one and want to check him out Then they can sniff each other through the bars, kind of see what it's all about. You can start to tell if they're going to get along or if they're going to start fighting right away. At that point, if they start fighting, you know that you don't want to put them in together, because it's going to be pretty ugly. If they do look like they are getting along, then I'll usually open up the carrier door and let both of them hop in and out of it, play around a little bit. If at any time it looks like they are getting aggressive, you can just toss a towel over them to break them up. Pick them up right away, because you don't want anything to happen. If they do seem to keep getting along, you can keep taking them out to have play time together and then little by little letting them into the other one's cage to kind of see how it goes. Kind of move on from there. If they don't get along, the way to introduce them slowly is to first put their cages side by side and then move them closer and closer together so that they can get used to the sounds and the scent of the other chinchilla. Stay with us and we are going to talk about "Chinchillas in Pairs: Part Three"."