chinchilla urine

[shell47]

Hope someone can help i am a newbie with 2  1 year old chinnies sid and diego, they live together very happily may i add...with having the whole spare room to themselves and there cage door  is always open so they come and go as they please,  sid has only 3 legs he had an accident last easter my poor baby bless him he loves life so much , but hes trouble!!!!

When doingf the daily clean down of their cage i notice some pee and on the light wood it almost looked black but when wiping it with a wetwipe it was actually brown..there pee is normally orange but this wasnt and im not sure which one it was, both seem fine and were running around like madmen as usual...they have had a few locust bean dried treats this week and a few other bits.. is this discolouration anything to worry about or is it quite normal?   hope someone can help xx

[moletteuk]

I'm sorry we don't have any chinchilla people on the forum these days. You might get more help from www.chinchillaworld.com/forums/ or another active chinchilla forum.

I would think it could be food related, but the most common foods to cause discoloration are red flowers, like hibiscus, or tree bark, I'm not sure if locust beans can cause discolouration. The other cause could be blood in the urine, in which case a vet trip would be required.

[davx]

Yes it could be food related as we know it from our degus. Observe the urine if it occurs again that it differs from normal colour and if there might be a given food as cause or something different. Usually in the most cases such colour changes are induced by food, but of course it might have health related causes as well. In the latter case usually also other signs for illness should be present or in doubt it is recommended to visit a vet.