Smilies

This haven't got anything to do with my chinnies or any other animal for that matter, but a comic I'm working on.

I have a site for the comic (not up and running yet though), and wanted some smilies that looked like the animals in the comic.
I have some ideas for other expressions, but right now there is 7 different smilies, and 6 different animals, so I should end up with 42 smilies 18 of these will be animated.

Chinchilla

 Fox

Hedgehog

 I'm thinking about doing one more animation where it looks from site to site.

They are quite easy to do, it's just a bit boring doing them all at once, because they look so alike :)

Not so good bottles

I'm not sure how I feel about my new bottles.

I didn't mention they are from LivingWorld...

They have all this fancy stuff that should prevent them from dripping.
That's all nice and dandy, but at times it also prevents my animals from getting any water...

It took me about 10-15 minutes to get the big one to work. Now it works just fine.
The little one worked okay from the start, but yesterday it wouldn't work at all.

On the bright site, they stay where you put them on the cage, and they can be used for all types of cages.
One side of the bottle is flat, and the end the animals can drink from is all metal.
There's no plastic what so ever...

I'm not sure what to think about them.
I really like that there's no plastic, but on the other hand, if they stop working from one minute to the next...

Glass bottles

We finally found some glass bottles.
One of our girls keeps making a hole in the plastic bottles but it's been near impossible to find any glass bottles, and importing from USA is more than a bit expensive.

Inside the bottles are a tiny plastic carrot to show the water level ^_^
I'm really looking forward to trying these out.

2 litters on the way.

I was hoping my one female would give birth in start november, but nothing happened, so I think she may give birth around start december.

I also think my other female might be pregnant.
I'm hoping she'll give me a homo pink white ebony with some nice markings. It's not a kit I can keep, but I do like that mutation, and it would be nice to see some nice kits from this female :)

I haven't introduced my two females properly yet.
We are moving around 1th december, so I'm waiting until this time. The I'll be able to introduce them in a nice big new cage.

We are thinking about how to make the new cages.
It's either going to be large cages for breeding, and smaller cages for pure pets, or the other way around.
At the moment I think we are going with the smaller ones for breeding, as they will be designed in a way so we can split them into two cages.
The big cage is 140 cm high, 100 cm long and 60 cm deep. That's about 55.1" x 39.4" x 39,4"

The cages I have in mind, would be 140cm x 80cm x 60cm
It's not that much smaller, but it would be a lot easier to move around.

I can't make the cages any deeper because there's 30 cm in the bottom used for storage + 5 cm for wheels. That's a 175 cm high cage - it's about 6-7 cm higher than me. If it gets any deeper, I have no chance in hell of getting to animals in the top of the cage, or cleaning it out, with out me standing on something.

If the smaller cages are going to be our breeding cages, they can be split in half, so each cage will be 75 x 80 x 60 cm
We will put the male in the top, and the female with kits in the bottom.
When the kits are ready to be weaned, the cage can be split again and they can be put in the bottom or the top.

More to come when we hopefully get two litters and our new cages :)
Oh - and I'm going to a show this weekend with my homo brown ebony ;)

A post a month

I think I'm going to try and post here once every month.

I'm not really blogging at the moment.
Nearly all my time is spend on DCKF (Danish Chinchillaclub), so blogging about the critters is not that high on my list.

I can't remember if I mentioned this before, but I'm trying to introduce two of my females.
It's going really slow.
A combination of me being a bit lazy and the weather. It's been so hot here, so I've not wanted to move the animals to a neutral ground. The only really good neutral ground I have is a big bathroom. But it has no windows, so it becomes very hot in there when it's hot outside...
Normally I have no problem keeping the room the animals are in, a nice cool temperature. This summer has been a bit weird though, and the humidity had been very high, so it's been a bit of a problem keeping it cool enough.

Our baby girl (One Hit Wanda) has found a nice family. She has not moved out yet, but they are very nice and I really am looking forward to following Wanda aka Chewie in the future.
They are going to call her Chewbacca. Chewie actually suites her quite well :)

The homo tan boy we brought home is a bit annoying. I'm crossing my fingers it's just hes age though. He keeps on biting, and biting hard, if we try and touch him trough the bars.
The last animal I had that bit me like that, was my old male, but he grew out of it.
Other that that he's a very sweet boy. Not all that happy about getting out, but once out he sits still and lets us do almost every thing we want to do with him.
I'm not sure how good he is with kids though... And it's a bit of a problem that kids can't pet him trough the cage.

That's a nice thing with friendly animals. You can take them out, and let small kids pet them, and the kids can stick their fingers in the cages with out any risk of them getting bitten.

Nick and I were out talking about chinchillas at a very big pets shop, and we had these 3 friendly animals with us.
Is was so nice to see how they didn't mind being petted a bit by both kits and grownups, and if we took them out, they were very calm and didn't mind at all.
After a while it got a bit too hot for them though. But that's a nice way of introducing chinchillas to people. They get to see it's quite calm animals, but still chinchillas though, so no cuddly pet.
I was especially proud of my girl Nebri (it was dad christian, mom nebri and kit wanda). She was so good and sweet.
Wanda surprised me. People just took her up, but she couldn't care less. She looked like she had a blast.

Other than that it has been rather uneventful the last couple of months.

I'll try and write again before a whole month passes by.

Baby chinchilla + new boy

I'm so bad at updating this blog :S

Mini gave birth to a cute little medium ebony girl on the 16. of june.
For some reason she only seams to get litters of one, so we thought of renaming her One Hit Wonder.
But it already says Furrytails' Nebri on her predegree (we call her Mini, but that's not her name ;)), so now we are going to call the kit One Hit Wanda (that name is just so clever -_- we are very creative as you see ;)).

Other than that, we got a new boy. He's a beautiful homo medium tan (gosh I sound like Steve Irwin), I've never seen such a dark homo tan before.
He's been put in with Madonna. They seam to like each other :) He's a bit "flat" in the face, and kinda round. Madonna is a bit too pointy for my taste, so it's nice she has a mate that may make the kits look the way we want :)
A funny thing though. He's tail is all white. I'm going to put a picture of him onto my homepage one of the next days.
He also have very tiny feet compared to Madonna. I have a feeling it has something to do with genetics.
Some day I'm going to look in to this :)

German hedgie forum

FINALLY I found a German forum where they don't mind me speaking English :)
So now I'm just hoping one of them want to act as my "mentor" and I can get a long eared hedgie boy at some point :)

I really need my own apartment before this can happen. And a car... It's not fun taking the train to Germany... I would definitely need a car ;)

I'm crossing my fingers I do not have to get a hedgehog from a pet store :)

Treating Fungus

Fungus in chinchillas is actually really easy to treat.
All you need is:
5 grams of sulphur powder
10 grams of babypowder

This should be used for 1 kilogram of chinchilla sand/dust.

It should not be used for more than 1-2 weeks. If the problem hasen't cleared up by then, you need to consult your vet.

Fungus typically starts around the nose, ears or eyes. You will see hair loss and red skin.
If you are not sure about what's wrong, please consult a vet.

Picture time

Better late than never :)

Click on the thumbnails if you want them bigger.

They are from the 28. february :)


This is the dad Christian. We took him out, and he was so bummed after his little run around. Normally his not that happy about cuddling, but if he's tired enough he loves it, it seams ;)


A lot of pics with mom (Mini) and Dino :) The last is the best one imo. If you look at Minis bum, you can see a tiny little face, trying to get under mom ;)



Pure Mini. On the 3. you can see Dino.

What should the little boy be called?

We are trying to figure out what to call him, so far we are thinging about the following:
Furrytails' Bambam
Furrytails' Dino (we prefer this at the moment)
Furrytails' Vaffel
Furrytails' Frikadelle

He's 48 grams today, so he has lost a bit of weight, but he's quite active today, so it shouldn't be a problem :)

Update on the boy

He has now opened his eye :)
When Nick came by, we looked at it, and it had opened on it's own. It's a bit smaller than the other eye though. But I think it is normal. It looks like an eye on a newborn (a couple of hours old).
And here are some pictures of the little guy :)


Sorry about the quality, but it's very dark where he sits, so I had to blitz him and that's nearly never a good thing. I'll try and get some pictures of him to morrow in daylight. I prefer to take pictures of the animals, on some red couches we have, but this little guy is just not old enough to get over there yet.

And as you can see from the pictures, hes a Tan boy as I thought to begin with :)

Eye problem

So I called the fur breeder.
He told me to let it be, and it would be fine on it's own.
If I want to, I can use a q-tip and make they eyelid a little wet, to try and get the eye open.
When Nicholas comes by later we will try and do that :)

Ebony?

Okay, so I have no clue right now.
This morning I could swear he was medium tan, now he looks more like a medium ebony.

I have absolutely no idea what he is, other than medium -_-
The fur on hes feet looks kinda gray compared to his skin colour, and hes ears could look both grey and pink.
Normally when we get kits whit beige in them, they also have white in them, so their ears are near white and not pink.
Wilson White animals is quite easy to identify, but this one... And you would think it would be easy to see if the fur was brow or grey.
I guess that's the same thing that goes wrong, when people say their hetero beige animals are standard grey animals...

Other than that, his left eye won't open.
I can't decide if I should try and help him by soaking the eye a bit, or just leave it be.
We've had one female with this problem. With her it was both the eyes though. We helped her out, but then a lot of people commented and told me that was not the way to go.
Now I'm all confused. Some say help, some say help after a few hours to a day and then we have some that say do not help at all...
Conflicting info - whoopdedoo...
Thinking about calling a fur breeder, and ask what he wold do. He must have some info on the subject, and even though the hobby breeders I know are good breeders, they just do not have as many animals as a fur breeder...

Little new Tan boy

This morning between 5.00 and 9.00 Minipiv gave birth to a beautiful little Tan boy :)
He weighs 51 grams, and looks quite big, so I guess there's no more kits in her.

He looks quite new, so I will let Mini and the little boy have a couple of hours, before I begin taking any pictures of him :)

Madonna and Breeding

Madonna is turning out to have quite a pointy nose... To pointy for my liking to be honest. I still think Thea and Mini are beautiful animals, and I want my animals to look like them.

So I need to find a near baby-faces male, but still not over 700 grams (I still prefer the mails to be between 500-600 grams).

But it should be a lot easier to find a male to my liking, if he does not have to have a pointy nose.

And talking about pointy. I've notices that a lot of all black animals tend to be quite pointy and have a pear form, and not the brick-look you want when showing. It's kinda weird IMO. I'm not sure it's the same in Norway or Sweden. Might have something to do with the fact, that ebony can be quite a challenge to breed

I'm not sure if I want a chocolate or homo brown ebony though. I'm a sucker for the chocolate animals, but I think homo would be the best way to go, because I really want to try and focus on beige, white, ebony and velvet mutations. I would prefer to try and focus on brown ebony, pink white ebony, tov brown ebony and tov pw ebony.
Might sound weird, but on the other hand. It's much easier to work with 2-4 mutations than it is to work with a little of it all.

I'm also beginning to see, that we need to focus, if we want any hope of selling young in the future.
Too bad the std. grey isn't a colour people want. They are so beautiful, I especially like the very light grey animals. But they are near impossible to sell, and I just do not have the space to keep breeding and keeping all the std. kids we could get.
Don't get me wrong. I can keep the kits we get, if it should ever be a problem to sell them, but to focus on std. grey would be a breeding suicide.

That got a bit long - oh well... That's what you get when you feel like writing in english :)

The last month is the worst

So Mini is pregnant. There's about one month left of her pregnancy, and it's by far the worst. Not that she's sick or any thing, but it's now all the signs are showing, and I just can't wait :)
She sleeps way more on the side, is more sleepy, want's to cuddle a lot and her belly is really beginning to show.
Christian is also acting different, and there's no doubt he knows that something is up.

I'm hoping for a little chocolate male. Too bad I do not have the space >_<
I would love to get a nice little chocolate male, and a nice little homo ebony girl for him ;)

All I have to do, is to find a job for Nicholas, and get a place to live - that shouldn't be a problem in what... 4 months? -_-

Found a place ^_^

Normally I'm not that happy about getting animals from pet shops, but yesterday I was visiting this one big shop, and they may have all the animals I want ^_^
It used to be a very bad store in my opinion, but they changed owner a year ago, and it seams like it's a cool place now.
They have all these theme days, where they get people to come and speak about animals, and when I talked about the danish chinchilla club, and that I know people in the GP and ferret club, they got all exited and got my name... That's so cool.

But the cool thing is, they can get long eared hedgies, and as far as I could understand, they will be able to tell me what subspecies they have. That is so cool. It's very rare to find people who know what subspecies they have, and if I want to breed the hedgie at one point, I really need to find out what subspecies I have.

They can also get african pygmy dormice and asian/garden dormice.
The had a lot of persian jirds and some duprasi, animals I've been looking into.
I see duprasi from time to time, but they are mostly bread for feeding, and even though a pet store duprasi might not be the best animal when it comes to genetics, I would rater have such an animal than a feeder animal because I think the risk of inbreeding with feeders a greater.
When it comes to jirds the most common one is the mongolian gerbil.
I've also seen the shaws jird from time to time, but it's rare to see any other species.

I know it's possible to get ADS's from breeders from time to time. I haven't seen the asian ones here though. I know they are in germany and holland.

So I'm happy at the moment, I know where to get a lot of species I really want.
Now I just need to contach one from DCKF (Danish Chinchilla Pet Association) and talk about speaking in the store :)

Problems with Fnug

I wrote this on a forum to get some views on what might be wrong with Fnug.

I'm also going to post it here, as it describes the problems quiet well even though it might not sound/look too much like a blog entry:

First a little background story:
Fnug is about 5 years old.
When she was born she had a weight of 30 grams. The day after it was 29-28 grams, and she didn't gain any weight until she was about 3 days old. We had to give her some extra milk to help her out, even though mom did have enough milk for both kits.
Here eyes were closed, so we helped her open them.

She's always been a bit weird. She can sleep trough almost every thing. I've been scared that she was dead a couple of times, because I could pick her up when she was sleeping, before she noticed anything.
She also have some very weird tendencies, I've never seen in a chinchilla before, so we think she may have some brain damage.

Now to the problem:
About 1½ months ago she had some problems with her stomach. She was all bloated, and the vet thought it might be colic. A lot of fibreplex and tummy rubbing later she was all better.
When they checked her for this, they noticed a heart murmur.

Yesterday we were at the vets again. This time because of a swollen leg.
It turns out it's because of oedema, and this might be related to her heart murmur.
She's very thin, and haven't eaten that much for quite some time. But the past couple of weeks, she's been eating hay like a crazy chin. She sleeps with her head in they hay, so when she wakes up, she can just munch some hay and go right back to sleep.
She seams to be cold. She's not cold to touch, bur she likes warm places. The warmer the better. If she could just lie with me under my blanket and eat hay all the time, I think she would be in heaven.
But when she falls asleep, she has this tendency to get something that looks like seizures. Especially her swollen bag leg starts twitching, and she's all over the place until she wakes up and looks very confused.
Today I noticed it started around her face/whiskers, and then moved down the body.

I've seen this a couple of times before in one of our late chinchillas that had epilepsy, but it's not quite the same thing with Fnug.

Other than that, she drinks a lot. Yesterday she peed on me twice in about 10 minutes. She's never done that before.
Also her feces looks normal one moment, then it looks like she may be getting a mild constipation, and the next moment she might be getting diarrhea.
If we take her from her cage, and put her into a pet carrier she can get a very bad case of diarrhea in 1-2 minutes, and the after ½-1 hour it's all gone.


I'm so lost with her.
I can't figure out if we should put her trough some tests and try and find out what's wrong with her.
At the moment I'm personally thinking kidney failure. My mom had a dog many years ago who had kind of the same symptoms with the seizures and it was kidney failure.
But the whole eating thing doesn't really fit into anything.
It gives sense to think it's the heart murmur that causes the problem.
I have always known that Fnug wouldn't be her for as long as a "normal" chinchilla.

I can almost positively rule out anything wrong with the hay and/or feed because she lives with her sister, and nothing is ever wrong with her. She's a totally normal chinchilla.

Oh yeah, and one last thing.
Fnug is not good at holding her balance if she's not walking on a sturdy surface, she nearly never jumps or runs like a normal chin, but walks along like a kangaroo.
But if she starts to run and jump, it's like she gets the hang of it after a few minutes. Often it's like she's all tired out a short while after she starts to move like a chin, and then she needs a break. She prefers to take these breaks on me or my boyfriend.
I think the whole walking thing has been getting worse with her mad hind leg.

Her weight is around 440-450 grams. It swings quite a lot between these numbers, so I can't get any closer.

Rutine cleaning took 4 hours

We wanted to clean cages today... We only got to clean one.
That stupid Thea. She's eaten trough a massive plastic bottom, and eaten then wheel below.
So we had to fix the cage.
Now the plastic bottom contains one big wooden plate, so they can't eat the plastic. And we put Mystique and Madonna in the cage.

We so need to build some new cages... Something's all wrong with the one we fixed. We put 4 new wheels on it, the same size and all, but not it's all wobbly...

Stupid cages...

It didn't really take 4 hours. We needed to find some stuff and do other things in between. But from start to finish 4 hours had passed.

Chinchilla links

I'm really bad at updating this blog.
I tend to update my danish Furrytails blog when I'm very tired, or haven't got that much time, so I never get to this one. And when I finally get to this one, so much time has passed it seams kinda stupid to update.

But now I'm going to post some links you may find useful.
I do not have that many american links because it's very expensive to order from USA for me.
Inside the EU is best, then they don't add toll...

So let's see what we've got :)

Chinworld.com
They have 2 things I like here.
Wheels and Books.
They have some books by Alice Kline, one of the "old dogs" in the fur farming industry. Her books are very good, and you get some nice knowledge trough them, you'll have a hard time find in any other books.
As far as I know, these books can't be bought any where else.
They they have some wheels. It can be very hard finding good chinchilla wheels. They have both the standard wheel, and the flying saucer.
These can be bought other places, but this is one of the easiest places to get them, and they are not that expensive compared to some other places :)

HammockyHammocks
This is a shop located in the UK.
The have some very nice and very good quality hammocks, beds, tunnels and other stuff like that in polar fleece. All their things are hand made.
Depending on the size of your cage, get as big hammocks as possible. A hammock can easily become too small, but never too big.
Note that these can not be destroyed as fast as the common ferret hammock in pet shops.
The profit goes to pet rescues.

Chinchillas2Shop
An other shop located in the UK, and one of my personal favorites.
They have a lot of natural chew toys for chinchillas. A year or two ago they also started adding an icon to show if the toys are degu safe.
Some of the things they have can be bought from other stores, but no other store (as far as I know) has that big a variation in their stock. So if you prefer natural toys and treats, this is definitely a place you need to visit :)

Zooplus.com
Zooplus.co.uk
Zooplus.de
Same shop, but different countries.
They do not have that many things, but they do have some nice cages. I'm not sure about the prices in USA and UK but in Germany they are quite cheap.
They do have some shops in other countries, you can see them by liking on "shop" on the site.

Petpile.dk
The site is in danish, but you can use the google translator on it.
As far as I know, she ships to other countries.
It's kinda the same as HammockyHammocks, but she also has some treats just for rats, and some plastic things used for small critters as huts.
Alle the polar fleece stuff is hand made.
Note that these can not be destroyed as fast as the common ferret hammock in pet shops.

Danchin shop
This is their english shop.
They have some super nice feed, hay, home made cages, treats and some other things.
Definitely worth a visit.

So that was the end to my chinchilla link tour...
If you have some good links please feel free to put them down in a comment below, and I will look at the site :)