The Chinchilla Cage
There are certain things that you should think about when you are purchasing a chinchilla cage for your pet chinchilla. You must understand exactly what the animal requires in terms of the size of the cage, the space that the chinchilla requires for its own health, and you must understand something of the habits of the chinchilla. Although these animals were originally from South America, the Andes Mountains to be exact, they are still fairly demanding creatures when it comes to keeping them in an environment which will not only stimulate them but keep them alive. This of course is true of any animal, if you owned a dog then you would need to purchase a dog house which was large enough for the animal to move around in, you wouldn’t buy a small dog house for a St Bernard dog for instance.
Because the chinchilla is intelligent and is so interesting, simulation is one of the things that you must provide within the environment of chinchilla cages. Your chinchilla must be stimulated by providing very necessary playthings and the chinchilla must have the room to move around its own environment. Because the chinchilla can chew very vigorously, and any object that you place inside the cage for the chinchilla to play with most comply with specific safety requirements. The chinchilla will chew and swallow some of the pieces that it is chewing off, so you must ensure that any of the pieces that chinchilla is swallowing our not going to damage the animal in any way. For instance, little bits of plastic that a chinchilla will chew from plastic toys can actually get lodged inside the chinchilla, especially in its intestinal tract, causing very serious problems. This is one of the main reasons why most chinchilla toys are made from simple wood. But you must make sure to purchase toys that are made from specific types of wood because the chinchilla can sometimes be allergic to some types of wood.
Now, as I mentioned previously, space is one of those things that the chinchilla cage must provide. Because the chinchilla has a nature of climbing and jumping it must be allowed to have as much space in order to carry out this instinctive behavior as possible. 24″ x 24″ is the minimum floor space that chinchilla needs and you should make sure that your chinchilla cage has sufficient height for the animal to climb.