A white chinchilla asleep on a log with one pink ear raised

What living with a chinchilla is like

Asleep all day, busy from dusk

A chinchilla's day runs opposite to yours. It sleeps wedged on a ledge until late afternoon, wakes around dusk, and is busiest from evening into the night, so the cage belongs in a room where daytime is calm and nobody minds a wheel turning at midnight. Daily care takes 15 to 20 minutes: top up hay, measure pellets, change the water, sweep up droppings (dry and nearly odorless) and offer the dust bath. Add 30 to 60 minutes of supervised time out of the cage most evenings. They are social and usually do best in a same-sex pair, but they are also prey animals: trust is earned slowly, and many never enjoy being held.

Chinchilla or degu?

ChinchillaActive at dusk and overnight, very soft, long-lived (10 to 20 years) and intolerant of heat. Best if you are home in the evenings, can keep one room under 75°F all summer, and want a pet for the long haul.

Start here

Find a chinchilla rescue or breeder within driving distance and ask to visit in the evening, when the animals are awake. Handle one before you commit to a decade or two.

Petfinder

Degu keepingDegus are smaller cousins from Chile that are awake in the daytime, live 5 to 9 years and need company, so they are kept in pairs or small groups. They share the cage, hay, dust bath and chew toys on this page, but they are prone to diabetes and need their own sugar-free pellets and a smaller wheel. They are illegal to keep in a few states, California among them, and a degu must never be picked up by the tail.

Start here

Check your state wildlife agency's rules first, since a few states ban degus. Then read one vet-written care sheet end to end and look for a same-sex pair or trio from a rescue.

PetMD: caring for a degu

Open a card for the first thing to do. Its button puts that animal's pellets and wheel in the kit and takes the other animal's out. Everything else on the list suits both.

Degu care, written by vets

A brown degu standing on a wooden shelf inside a wire cage — A degu on a cage shelf

How to get started

Tick each ledge off as you go

Finding a vet and an animal

Choosing the cage and the room

Go tall.

Vets suggest at least 3 feet wide, 2 feet deep and 3 feet high for one chinchilla, and closer to 5 feet high for a pair. They jump several feet straight up and use every level.

Choose all metal.

Check for wire spacing of 1 inch or less, metal pans and metal shelves. They gnaw through plastic and swallowing it can block the gut.

Cover wire floors and ramps.

Bare wire traps feet and causes sores, so fit solid wooden ledges or fleece over any mesh they stand on.

Stagger ledges so no drop is more than about 18 inches.

A fall from the top of a tall cage breaks legs.

Line the pans with unscented paper bedding or fleece.

Never cedar. Vets disagree about pine shavings, so skip them unless the bag says kiln-dried.

Keep the room at 60 to 75°F with humidity under 50 percent.

Above 80°F a chinchilla can die of heat stroke within hours, because that dense coat cannot shed heat. A granite slab in the cage gives them a cool place to lie.

Give them a solid running wheel

About 15 inches across for a chinchilla, 11 to 12 for a degu. Wire and mesh wheels catch toes, and plastic exercise balls overheat them.

Before any time out of the cage, get on the floor and look for wires, baseboards, houseplants and gaps under furniture.

Anything reachable gets chewed.

Cage sizes and temperature limits

VCA Animal Hospitals: chinchilla housing Free vet-written guide with the cage sizes and temperature limits used on this page

A grey chinchilla on wood chips among upright wooden posts in its enclosure — Wood underfoot

What they eat

Grass hay is the diet. Keep a fresh pile available around the clock: timothy, orchard grass or meadow hay. It wears down teeth that never stop growing and keeps the gut moving.
Add 1 to 2 tablespoons a day of plain, uniform pellets made for the species. Avoid mixes with seeds, colored bits or dried fruit: they pick out the sweet parts and leave the rest.
Treats are tiny and rare. One plain rose hip, a pinch of dried herbs or a single unsweetened oat a few times a week is plenty. No nuts, seeds, raisins or yogurt drops.
Degus get no fruit or sugary treats at all. Even small amounts push them toward diabetes and cataracts.
Water comes from a bottle, changed daily. Check the spout with a finger each evening, since a stuck ball bearing leaves them dry.
Soft droppings, a messy bottom or a refused meal means too many treats or a diet change that was too fast. Go back to hay and pellets only, and call the vet if it lasts a day.

Hay, pellets and safe treats

VCA Animal Hospitals: feeding chinchillas Free vet-written guide to hay, pellet amounts and safe treats

A degu holding a green leaf in its front paws behind cage bars — A degu eating a leaf

A grey chinchilla held on two cupped hands in front of a brick wall

Dust baths, handling and playtime

Dry, supported and close to the floor

Never wet a chinchilla.

The fur is so dense it holds water against the skin and can grow fungus. They clean themselves by rolling in fine volcanic dust, which soaks up oil and moisture.

Offer the bath in the evening, daily or at least several times a week, then remove it.

Left in the cage it becomes a litter box and dries out their skin and eyes.

Use dust sold for chinchillas, not sand, and replace it weekly or when it clumps.

Degus use the same dust about twice a week.

To lift a chinchilla, scoop under the chest with one hand and support the hind legs with the other, held against your body. Never squeeze, and never grab fur

A frightened chinchilla releases a patch of it to escape, and it takes months to grow back.

Stay on the floor during playtime.

They leap without warning, and a jump from standing height onto a hard floor can injure them.

Young children and chinchillas are a poor match.

The animals are fragile, fast and asleep when kids are awake. Treat them as a family pet that an adult handles.

Health and vet care

Book a first exam with an exotics vet within two weeks of bringing them home, then a checkup once a year. Budget $60 to $120 per visit.
Teeth are the big one. Drooling, a wet chin, dropping food, weight loss or pawing at the mouth all point to overgrown teeth and need a vet soon. Healthy front teeth are deep orange, not white.
Know the signs of overheating: lying stretched out, red ears, fast breathing, drooling. Move the animal to a cool room at once and call the vet. Do not dunk it in cold water.
A chinchilla that stops eating or stops producing droppings for 12 hours is an emergency. Their gut shuts down quickly once it slows.
Never give leftover or over-the-counter medicine. Several common antibiotics, penicillin among them, can kill a chinchilla.
Watch for bald, scaly patches on the nose or feet (ringworm, which people can catch) and for fur chewing, which usually signals stress or boredom.
Wash your hands after handling the animals or cleaning the cage, and keep the dust bath away from anyone with asthma. The dust hangs in the air for a few minutes.

Signs of illness and household safety

What trips beginners up

Expect a pet you watch more than you hold. Some chinchillas become lap sitters after a year, and many never do.
Expect noise at night. Wheels rumble, ledges thump and some chinchillas bark, so a bedroom is rarely the right room.
Expect chewed everything. Shelves, hideouts and toys are consumables you replace a few times a year.
Drop the habit of treating by hand to make friends faster. Raisins and nuts are the classic mistake and lead to bloat, bad teeth and a fatty liver.
Do not trust a starter cage from a pet store shelf. Most are too small, too short and full of plastic.
Do not put two strangers in one cage. Introductions take weeks with side-by-side cages, and fights cause serious bites. A pair that already live together avoids all of it.
Do not wait out a hot day. If the air conditioning fails, move the cage to the coolest room or the basement and add frozen water bottles wrapped in fleece.

A grey chinchilla asleep wedged in a round rock hide with its ears flat out to the sides — Asleep in a hide

Where to learn more

Start with vet-written material, because pet store care sheets for chinchillas are often out of date. The Merck Veterinary Manual and VCA Animal Hospitals both publish free, plain-language chinchilla guides, and your exotics vet is the best source for anything specific to your animals. A local chinchilla rescue is worth knowing even if you buy from a breeder: volunteers there have seen every beginner problem and usually answer questions for free.

Free vet-written reference

Merck Veterinary Manual: providing a home for a chinchilla Free reference on caging, safe woods, dust baths and exercise

Why the kit looks like this

The cage is most of the bill and the one place not to save: a tall all-metal cage outlasts the animal, while a cheap plastic one gets chewed apart in a season. Everything inside is wood, metal, glass or ceramic for the same reason. Hay, pellets, dust and bedding are the running costs, at roughly $25 to $40 a month for a pair. Pellets and the wheel differ by species, so choose Chinchilla or Degu keeping in the kit and it swaps in the right ones. The animals themselves and the first vet visit are not in the cart total.

A white chinchilla curled up in a plastic corner tray, seen through cage bars — Through the cage bars

Fit out the cage

Compare the options on each line, then set your tiers and check out from the cart. Clicking a card selects it there. The first line, the animals, is not something you buy online: they come from a rescue or a breeder. The pellets and the wheel join the kit once you choose Chinchilla or Degu keeping.

Same-sex pair of chinchillas or degus

essential · The animals

Both species are social and settle best with a companion they already know, so start with two that live together now.

Not sold on Amazon · rescue or breeder

Not sold on Amazon. Look for a small-animal rescue or a breeder who lets you see the parents, and ask for a same-sex pair that already share a cage, their ages and their current diet. Expect $75 to $150 each for a rescue chinchilla, $150 to $350 each from a breeder, and $25 to $60 each for degus.

Tall multi-level metal cage

essential · Housing

Chinchillas and degus jump and climb, so they need height and several levels, and they chew through anything that is not metal.

budget

PawHut Metal Small Animal Cage, 5-Tiers Rolling Big Ferret Cage with Hammock, Removable Tray, for Chinchilla, Sugar Glider, White

4.0(2,088)

$113.95

Chinchilla Keeping

What living with a chinchilla is like

Chinchilla or degu?

How to get started

Choosing the cage and the room

What they eat

Dust baths, handling and playtime

Health and vet care

What trips beginners up

Where to learn more

Why the kit looks like this

Fit out the cage

Same-sex pair of chinchillas or degus

Tall multi-level metal cage

Timothy hay

Dust bath house

Chinchilla bathing dust

Unscented paper bedding

Glass water bottle

Clamp-on stainless steel food bowl

Wooden hideout

Wooden cage ledges

Wood chew sticks

Granite cooling stone

Room thermometer and humidity gauge

Small pet travel carrier

Chinchilla pellets

15-inch solid metal wheel

Degu pellets

12-inch solid wheel