lørdag den 30. januar 2010

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? -_-

lørdag den 16. januar 2010

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 :)

lørdag den 9. januar 2010

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.

lørdag den 2. januar 2010

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.

fredag den 1. januar 2010

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 :)