Hand Feeding a chinchilla that has stopped eating.
This page talks about teeth problems and emergency feeding of sick chinchillas that are either unwilling or unable to feed themselves. If you are looking for information about feeding healthy chinchillas the try the feeding chinchillas page. You can go to the Chinchillas Unlimited forum for more individual support.
If you are worried about your chinchilla please take him/her to the vet as soon as possible. Not eating is always a serious symptom and your chinchilla may die very quickly. Please also discuss hand feeding your chinchilla with your vet. This page is only designed to share my experiences not as vetinary advice.
Why isn't my chinchilla eating?
The first thing that needs to be done is to identify why your chinchilla is not eating and treat the problem. Any chinchilla that isn't eating should go to the vet immediately - they die very quickly if they cannot eat. Of a chinchilla stops eating for more than a few hours the normal movement of their gut can stop or slow down and can be very difficult to start up again. As well as dental problems, other illnesses such as pneumonia can cause a lack of appetite. Things such as bloat and gut blockages can also be to blame and inappropriate feeding can cause serious problems.
Teeth problems are sadly a common problem in chinchillas. Symptoms are loosing weight, obvious problems eating, pawing at the mouth, dropping food when eating, drooling and even weepy eyes and constipation. It is very difficult to diagnose teeth problems in a conscious chinchilla and they often have to be anaesthetized to be checked and some problems need an x-ray to diagnose. Not all vets have a lot of experience with chinchillas and you may need to take your chinchilla to a more experienced vet for a diagnosis. Because the weight loss often starts before any other symptoms all pet chinchillas should be weighed regularly. A slow weight loss of more than about 50g over a number of weeks or a more rapid loss of more than about 20g might need a vets visit. Here's how I weigh my two using their sand bath tank.
There is a list of recommended vets and more information on teeth problems in the reference section of Chinchillas Unlimited and lots more information than I can give on teeth problems and nutrition on ChinCare. This is an excellent post on dental problems in rabbits which is also relevant to all rodents that eat a mostly hay diet such as chinchillas, degus and guinea pigs. The Dacross vetinary dentistry website has a wealth of information including a very interesting document on Management of rabbit and rodent tooth elongation.
After Treatment
Even after mouth problems have been treated a chinchilla can have a very sore mouth - they often develop infected ulcers or the dental work itself can make the mouth sore for a while. Sadly, by the time that they receive treatment, many chinchillas are no longer eating and often are very thin indeed.
It is very important to have adequate pain relief - the vet will probably inject a long acting pain killer after the operation, so it's not uncommon for chinchillas to come back eating and then stop after 24 hours when the pain kicks in. Your vet will be able to give you Metacalm which is mild pain relief on the level of something like asprin/paracetamol. They can also give injections of something like Vetergesic (Buprenorphine). This is a much stronger opiod painkiller which is more suitable for severe pain. We also successfully treated Spike with it orally (0.1ml every 12 hours) for an infected ulcer after surgery - this is really worth discussing with your vet if your chinchilla is obviously having pain problems after surgery.
Chinchillas with other conditions like pneumonia can need hand feeding as well if they have stopped eating. Syringe feeding is often recommended for chinchillas that have stopped eating, but it can be difficult to do safely and quite stressful for owner and chinchilla. Sometimes it is necessary and there are details of how to do it on the Azure Chinchillas website. Try to find someone that can demonstrate it to you if your chinchilla will not eat any other way. There are owners with experience of this on the Chinchillas Unlimited forums.
However, there is an alternative. Most chinchillas can be fed softened food from a spoon whilst sat on your lap. The trick is to be as quiet and calm as possible so as not to turn it into a fight between you and your chinchilla. Put an old towel over your lap and sit the chinchillas quietly. You need to be patient. To start off with you may need to spend half an hour three or four times a day getting a small amount down your chinchilla. But this often will keep a chinchilla going until their mouth heals.
Take a piled spoonful of the softened food (see below for making a feed) and put it by their mouth. Some chinchillas will eat of their own accord or sometimes you need to gently touch the food to their mouth. They will then take a bite - often out of irritation - and once the food is in their mouth they will chew and swallow it, rather than spitting it out. If you are lucky you may find that your chinchilla will take food off the spoon in their cage, or even eat softened food from a bowl. But some chinchillas, like Fluff here, will need to be spoon fed.
The aim is to start hand feeding your chinchilla and slowly wean them back onto normal food. This can take a couple of weeks to do. You can try making the mix less and less liquid (although don't feed dry, ground food), or leaving longer between feeds. Breaking up their pellets into smaller pieces can sometimes help.
With her recent dental surgery Fluff would eat nothing at all when it was first done - she had an infected ulcer in her mouth. She looked very sorry for herself indeed, but I could get her to take very soft food from a spoon - a small amount 4 times a day. She went back to the vet after 5 days because she still wasn't producing any droppings and the vet gave her an injection that can help get the gut moving. After a week she started to take raisins and I stopped feeding her to encourage her to feed herself, but she lost weight rapidly and I started again. However part of the weight loss was due to her starting to produce droppings again. I cut down to two feeds a day and at two weeks she was starting to eat her pellets. I cut it to feed a day for another week and stopped all together by 3 weeks, by which time she was showing signs of chewing some toys a bit. I got 25g on her whilst spoon feeding, but she dropped 20g again when I stopped. However after a few nerve wracking days when her weight stabilized she started to gain again. One of the problems can be that the chinchilla associates eating with pain and if you are stopping them from being hungry by feeding them softened food they haven't got the motivation to start eating again. However, long term feeding of soft food will stop the molars wearing down properly and can make teeth problems worse so it is vital to spoon feed for as little time as possible. Because it was caught quickly Fluff was nearly 600g in weight even after the operation. Some chinchillas can be under 400g, and in this case getting weight on them can sometimes be the most important thing.
Making a Feed.
Specialist emergency feeds that you mix with water and contain additional fibre, nutrients and probiotics are available, such as Supreme Science Recovery and Oxbow Critical care. These are excellent, but quite expensive and not always easy to get hold of in a hurry - some vets do stock them or try the Pet Shopping page for sites. The simplest form of feed is to soak pellets in warm water (preferably pre-boiled and cooled from a kettle to kill any bacteria) until they go soft. But if you have a coffee grinder (or buy one, they aren't very expensive) you can do a better job. Grind the pellets up into a fine powder and place in a bowl. Then grind up some alfalfa and/or hay - you may need to chop it with scissors before putting it into the grinder. If you sive it after grinding you get finer pieces. Adding about a third of this to the mixture gives the fibre that is necessary to keep the chinchillas insides healthy. Oxbow Western Timothy Hay and Alfalfa Nibbles or the products supplied by Chinchillas2Home are good for this.
One of the advantages of making this sort of feed up is that you are feeding the chinchilla exactly what they would get in their normal diet. I mix this up to a sloppy paste with tepid/warm water (again preferably pre-boiled - make sure it isn't too hot).The other advantage of a sloppy paste is that it can provide vital fluids to a chinchilla that may be dehydrated after surgery and help get the gut going again. A healthy bowel requires lots of fibre, but that fibre needs to absorb fluid like a sponge to produce nice large droppings.
It's probably worth considering adding a pro-biotic to the mix, especially if your chinchilla is getting antibiotics as they can help make sure that the helpful bacteria in the gut are in a good condition. Your vet should have probiotics for small herbivores or you can buy a product such as Vetark Avipro. Vetark also do a product called Critical Care Formula - this is not the same as Oxbow Critical Care, but is a blend of nutrients especially for sick animals. I add a scoop of Avipro and a scoop of Critical Care Formula to half a bowl of the ground pellet and hay mix. A pinch of a calcium/ phosphorus supplement is can also be added (I use SA-37 but Calcium/Phosphorus from Chinchillas2Home is often recommended).
Some chinchillas are very difficult to get to eat and in this case a product called Enervite can be a godsend. This is a high calorie vitamin supplement for dogs that is sold in big pet shops such as Pets at Home. Chinchillas love it and will usually eat it from a spoon. It can be mixed with the above paste to make it much more attractive - Fluff really goes for this but to me it just looks foul. Enervite is great, especially if your chinchilla is very thin and desperately needs to put some weight on, but it is very high in sugar and shouldn't be given long term.
Longer term chinchillas need to be fed good quality pellets and a good quality hay, with only 1 or 2 treats, that shouldn't be larger than your fingernail, a day. Do not feed mixed feeds as they will only pick out the bits that they like and won't get all the vitamins they need. It is best with a chinchilla that is healthy to feed slightly less pellets than will last all day so that they have to eat their hay for part of the day. But for underweight chinchillas you might not want to do this.
