Hi, I'm new to this forum, and I have 2 questions....
Some background: We have 4 male chinchillas. We've had two of them for about a year now (Lupin and Thor, both about 15 months old) and the other two we got in August (Neville and Archie, both about six months old). We moved house in September.
So, the two pairs are caged separately because they still aren't really getting along. We let them out all together about once a week, but otherwise they come out to play in pairs...
In the past couple of weeks, Lupin and Thor have become very aggresive. They're constantly "dominating" each other, seem rather horny, and Lupin has started to attack my boyfriend and I when they're out of the cage. He'll lunge and bite exposed skin so we've had to start wearing big jumpers and socks to push him off! Both Lupin and Thor are aggressive towards us when they're in the cage and bite the bars, hiss and grunt at us and bite us.
This has all only started in the last couple of weeks. They're usually wonderful. Is it perhaps mating season/puberty?
So my first question:
1) why are they behaving this way, and what can we do about it?
Also. We've noticed that Thor has an injury that I believe may be a bite from Lupin. Just behind his testicles, towards the tail, he has a graze/shallow bite marks on both testes. There appears to be a small amount of pus, and yellow discolouring that may be urine stains(?), but it doesn't seem too terrible... We also noticed potential swelling of his gland in front of his left teste.. I've read that this can enlarge occasionally and it's normal, but could it be to do with the injury?
So question two:
2) should we take him to a vet? is there a way to treat him at home, like with salt water? Will we have to separate Lupin and Thor.
Many thanks! I apologise for the long post!
Mady
Some background: We have 4 male chinchillas. We've had two of them for about a year now (Lupin and Thor, both about 15 months old) and the other two we got in August (Neville and Archie, both about six months old). We moved house in September.
So, the two pairs are caged separately because they still aren't really getting along. We let them out all together about once a week, but otherwise they come out to play in pairs...
In the past couple of weeks, Lupin and Thor have become very aggresive. They're constantly "dominating" each other, seem rather horny, and Lupin has started to attack my boyfriend and I when they're out of the cage. He'll lunge and bite exposed skin so we've had to start wearing big jumpers and socks to push him off! Both Lupin and Thor are aggressive towards us when they're in the cage and bite the bars, hiss and grunt at us and bite us.
This has all only started in the last couple of weeks. They're usually wonderful. Is it perhaps mating season/puberty?
So my first question:
1) why are they behaving this way, and what can we do about it?
Also. We've noticed that Thor has an injury that I believe may be a bite from Lupin. Just behind his testicles, towards the tail, he has a graze/shallow bite marks on both testes. There appears to be a small amount of pus, and yellow discolouring that may be urine stains(?), but it doesn't seem too terrible... We also noticed potential swelling of his gland in front of his left teste.. I've read that this can enlarge occasionally and it's normal, but could it be to do with the injury?
So question two:
2) should we take him to a vet? is there a way to treat him at home, like with salt water? Will we have to separate Lupin and Thor.
Many thanks! I apologise for the long post!
Mady
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