There are so many chinchilla pellets on the market that it can be a challenge to know the difference between them. Can you go by price? Or make? Surely there must be a difference in the quality of cheaper pellets – after all, you get what you pay for, don’t you?
Well, the most simple way to find out the quality of a pellet is to look on the ingredient label that should be displayed on every bag, along with visually inspecting the pellets themselves.
A good pellet is specifically created to provide your chinnies with all the minerals and vitamins he needs for a healthy diet. This in turn helps to ensure a long life and good health. Because of this reason, it’s imperative that you only feed pellets that are designed to be fed to chinchillas. Rabbit, guinea pig or other animal pellets are not suitable, as these animals have different nutritional needs.
Quality pellets, good hay and clean, fresh water are all your chinchilla needs for a healthy and nutritious diet.
Very basically, there are two types of base material for chinchilla pellets. This should be hay, and is highly likely to be timothy (a grass hay) or alfalfa (a legume hay). Alfalfa based pellets are higher in protein than grass hay pellets.
When you look at the nutrition label on the pack, the first ingredient should always be a type of hay. These labels are ordered with the largest material first, and hay should be the primary source of food in pellets. If the first ingredient is not timothy hay or alfalfa, then it’s time to look elsewhere.
Take a look at the percentage of crude fiber in the pellets. In the case of timothy pellets, this should be over 18%, and preferably between 20-25%. The level of protein should be moderate, at around 16% or so.
In the case of alfalfa pellets, the protein levels will be a little higher – probably between 18-20%, and the fiber content should be as high as possible.
Photo by Uhoh Over and reproduced under attribution licence courtesy of Creative Commons and Flickr
If you look at some of the cheaper pellets, they tend to have many different ingredients and include lots of cheaper ‘treat’ items. Now, your chinnie is not going to think “oh, they’re bad for me.” Instead he’s going to think “yum yum,” and scoff these first, leaving the products he should be eating to ensure good health to go to waste.
Dietary problems in chinchillas can take a long time to show up, and even if their diet is changed in the future then the damage will already have been done. Chinnies are particularly susceptible to something known as hepatic lipidosis, or fatty liver disease. A too rich diet puts far too much strain on the liver, overloading it with fat cells and causing weight loss and even death. That’s why it’s essential to feed your chins a diet rich in fiber, and low in fat and oils.
With a little care and effort, it’s simple to feed your chinchilla the correct diet. And if you’re at all unsure about the quality of the pellets you’re feeding, then have a chat with a chinchilla savvy veterinary surgeon who’ll be happy to point you in the right direction.
Till next time – love those chinnies…
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