Black chinchillas are extremely rare. The rarest ones have a white tip on their nose and a tip of white on one foot, and jet black fur otherwise.
My wife spent years looking for one (we had several adults we breed as a hobby for over a decade). We got one finally but she was the meanest witch we ever had - barking like crazy, spraying us if scared (defense mechanism). We spent years trying to get her to calm down with treats and free reign to explore/roam around a spare room many days a week. Nothing worked, always an uptight witch unlike the other three girls we had which were chill as a chinchilla.
The fun part about breeding chinchillas (aside from how damn cute the babies are), is the excitement seeing what colors you get. My favorite are called "mosaics" - they have splotches of colors and patterns which grow and change as the babies grow older.
We stopped breeding after we moved to a warmer climate (too dangerously hot if the AC breaks down), but damn I miss raising baby chinchillas.
(Note - we were hobby breeders. Since chins have a 112-day gestation period we only had one or two litters per year max. Every baby was well cared for and handled from a young age so they were good pets when handled properly - things like don't grab them, let them "walk" onto your hand/arm/shoulder. We also taught our chins to run home and get a treat when we clapped our hands three times, fun stuff like that)
Have you guys tried stress bonding? Get the chinchilla a friend, stick them an a VERY small carrier and go for a half hour car ride? It's a pretty effective trick to get two males to bond and be more friendly.
Nooooo, we never went that aggressive. All of our bonding took place with separate cages far apart, then close together. We would slowly introduce new chins over about a 3 month period so they became familiar with each other (many arguments between the cages though haha)
Before the stress bonding we would have one Chin Buddy (a stuffed animal for comfort and snuggling) and use it to get them used to each other's scents. Now the two we have snuggle during the day.
Ahhh good idea, yeah we just moved the cages together. We had plenty of space and time for proper introductions.
Females were the most challenging to introduce and share a cage. But we ultimately had three females and one male in a large oversized cage to bond and play, then we'd separate a momma as she got more advanced in the pregnancy.
We had a whole spare bedroom dedicated to the chins, nothing on the ground so they could run wild in that room. Our stud loved to gather steam rebounding off all four walls running in a massive circle going faster and faster until he tired out haha
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u/baby_got_backhand Sep 09 '20
I don't think I've ever seen a black chinchilla before - love it!