The Furrytails Gang

[darthchinchi]

Galathea (Thea). From our first litter she's turning 12 on march 14th. Not much of a cuddly animal, but we still love her


Madonna. True primadonna as a kit. Very sweet and friendly, and a bit of a rat face to her - haha.


Kuk, my pretty standard male. I simply love this light colouration but they are near impossible to get hold of anymore, and it's impossible to get them with out any recessive genes in them :/ When I say they are near impossible to get, this is not entirely true. It's quite easy to get hold of the light animals if you go to petshops. My experience with petshops is not good though and I really do not want to help them think chinchillas is a good way of making money. He's quite the character acting skittish one day, trying to breake out of the cage the next, not caring if we are standing right there or not ^_^


Madonna and her daughter Elvira. Elvira is such a weird animal. Not really into being handled, trying to bite one moment but totally cool if you give her a treat. She has always been like this, like from she was a week or two old. Same with Thea actually. Couldn't handle her from the start. I really like how they have such different personalities. I don't mind if they do not want to cuddle, that is part of the charm with chinchillas imo.


Blue. He looks so small. Colour is violet, thats why he looks more shiny than the rest. He is grown and about 4 years old if I'm not wrong. The small ears does make them look cute, but personally I'm not that much into these small ears. I got him because of his size. Didn't grow as previous owner expected = perfect size for me.


Speedy. Her mum is Madonna. Sweet girl, not that easy to handle but when she's out she's okay. Got her name for a reason. Funny how I tend to keep the animals that do not want anybody to handle them. They have such character.


Last one. Pandekage (pancake - sisters name was vaffel = waffel). Son of Blue and Speedy. Pandekage fits his name both in colour and size. Boy likes to eat and to be honest he's getting fat xD
He's one of those kits I ended up keeping, for some reason. I did actually have people interested in him, it just didn't work out and now he is going to stay here. I'm thinking he and his cagemate and dad Blue are the perfect animals for conventions and what not. Both friendly, not the most cuddly animals but love to sit on shoulders and eat treats.

[winic1]

Oh wow, they are so beautiful!

[Deleted]

Blue is my favourite!

[ntg]

What a beautiful bunch! Love the ears on Kuk.

Your other posts piqued my interest in wild chinchillas as you speak about them like they're totally different to the pet chinchillas you tend to see today. Honestly, on most of the pictures I would not have guessed they were the same animal. You could tell they were caviomorphs but if you put one in front of me I would have assumed it was a related species rather than being a chinchilla.

[moletteuk]

Really nice to see them

Just did a bit of searching myself. I'm finding it difficult to even find reliable images of what the two different chinchilla species look like in their natural wild state. Plus pics of the related viscachas keep turning up, they look like a caviomorph version of a hare to me.

[darthchinchi]

Thank you
I do have a few pic of wild chinchillas some where. Will find some when I get to my computer.
The fun thing with viscachas (besides being 1-5kg depending on species), is that the mountain species look like chinchillas where as the plains species looks like an ugly guinea pig.

As for species of chinchillas its hard to even get info on what species there are, may have been and if the pet version is a hybrid or pure. In the US they are generally believed to be a hybrid as far as I can tell, but they also count 3+ wild species
It's more common to think of the pet as a pure species in Europe (C. lanigera), but some farms are said to have pure C. brevicaudata herds, in southern America.

Imo there is 2 species. The lanigera and the brevicaudata. C. brevicaudata was believed to be extinct but specimens have been found in the wild! (save the wild chinchillas is to go to place for info on this subject). Then there's the C. chinchilla and one more k something. Can't remember. If these are/were real or just wrong ID of the other two is the question. Most literature I've looked into deems the C. chinchilla to be C. brevicaudata so more of the same species getting two different names, and then the first name is used.

C. brevicaudata (or the short tailed chinchilla), is a bit bigger with smaller ears and shorter tail. I do believe it has a better tint to the fur. Oh, and it's pregnant (what's the English term for this?) for an average of 128 days

C. lanigera (long tailed chinchilla) is a bit smaller, with longer tail, bigger ears and more pointy body type. They are pregnant for an average of 111 days. I do think the fur of this one is said to be better, and maybe something about reproduction rate.

But it is a jungle to navigate the info on wild specimens because they are so rare

[deguconvert]

They are all so beautiful!! Thank you for posting pictures of your chins!

[darthchinchi]

Finally introduced my trio. It went down relatively calm. That's what you get for letting your animals sit next to each other for 6 monts or so. Easy introductions - haha
Funny thing was to watch Madonna (white one. Mum to Elvira) mediate between the others and schold them if they did something she didn't think was okay. And now they all sleep together. She's evolved so much over the years. Such a nice chinchilla, nice to handle and quite sociable. She didn't use to be like that.
The boy is so sweet but he looks like a baby next to the females lol. He's not much for being handled though. Elvira is just nuts, threatening me if she feels like it, rubbish at taking treats. I'm actually a bit uneasy around her. I can pet her if she feels like it... Problem is it hurts like "#%¤ if they bite so I try and avoid getting bitten.

[deguconvert]

Maybe Elvira will sweeten as she matures as well? They are all SOOOO pretty!!

[darthchinchi]

They do tend to cool down if they have kits.

[randomname]

how did i miss this thread?! great pics darth. Madonna is my favourite, freckly ears are everything!
I know what you mean about the 'difficult' ones. My Zak bunny is an awkward so & so, but it just makes me like him more My Maggie chinchilla is a funny girl, hates being touched - won't even let me stroke her or scratch her ear. She loves to nibble on my hand though, & she's not that gentle. I let her because it's the only way we can bond & she's not trying to hurt me, but it's annoying. She likes to pretend she wants me to pet her, then she grabs my hand with her paws & searches for a nice thumbnail to nibble instead!

[darthchinchi]

She's grooming you randomname
If it's too hard try making a squeaking noics. It sometimes helps

[randomname]

I've tried that Darth. All the degus & chins do it but Maggie takes it too far. I try to tell her but I swear she laughs at me. She's cheeky, she knows what she's doing think.

[deguconvert]

Wonder what would happen if you had a squeaky toy in the other hand and gave it a hard squeeze at just the right moment?

[randomname]

the dogs would go mental that's what would happen! I remember I used to take one out when I took Stan for a walk at night, he'd always come back if he heard it. One time 5 other dogs appeared out of the darkness.. 2 big golden retrievers sitting nicely for me to throw a ball, rest of them jumping up & down. Gave me a proper heart attack, I didn't know anyone else was in the park!

[darthchinchi]

You coult try the noice and then tapping her on the nose with your finger.

[darthchinchi]

Haven't gotten around to those pictures of the little ones yet. It's so messy at home I'm actually getting stressed and every time I clean/remove clutter someone sees a free spot and puts something there, so I have just stopped cleaning and OMG -_-
Anyhow, my girl Speedy had an allergic reaction last weekend. I have no clue as to what. I think she might have gotten something in her eye, as it started there. It went from a bit of an eye problem to swollen face in 1½ days. Came home from my parents around 9pm on Saturday and she looked kind of like a rat. Normally you would expect a chinchillas to have a flat nose. The skin above her nose was swollen and pointing out, and it was going all the way back to her eye, and she couldn't eat properly.
I looks better now. First thought was teeth, but it would be super weird for her teeth to make so much mess in so little time. I was considering what to do if we had to put her down, as she's the one who had kits.
She got on painkillers and it looks to have helped. I really should see a vet about her again but haven't had the time.
I took the kits with her to the vet, as they were only 10 days, and she snatched one of the away and showed it to the other out back. So funny when you can hear but not see people looking at chinchilla babies. A lot of "awww" coming from the back - haha

So basically that's what's going on with my animals atm.
I'm going to name the kits Elle (elf), Alf (fairy) and Ente (ent - the big tree thing from Lort of the Rings). A friend thought it would be funny to name them after fairy tales creatures from woodlands, because they are not from the woodlands (gets kind of weird when we nerd chinchillas), so that's their names

[Emziedee]

Feb 26, 2017 10:22:38 GMT darthchinchi said:

Galathea (Thea). From our first litter she's turning 12 on march 14th. Not much of a cuddly animal, but we still love her

Omagad that mario cloud 😫😫😫😍