Chinchillas take baths in dust. Never get your chinchilla wet as this causes fungus! It is very comical to watch you chin roll around in their dust house. In the wild, chinchillas roll in volcanic ash to take oil and dirt out of their coats. There are many products that simulate this natural cleaning. We recommend Blue Sparkle Dust and Blue Cloud Dust. Blue Cloud is commonly used for chins during show season as it works wonders in making your chinchilla’s coat beautiful. An enclosed dust house is also recommended to contain the dust in one small area. You should dust your chinchillas 2 to 3 times a week- more or less depending on how humid your area is. Please remember when selecting a type of dust to make sure that it is actually a “dust” and not a “sand”. Sand is not fine enough and does not clean well enough by getting deep into the hair follicle.
During show season, we only use Blue Cloud as we feel, along with many other breeders and ranchers, that it is the best brand of dust to prepare for show. When preparing for a show, we follow a more strick dust policy to help our show chins reveal their true coats. When showing chinchillas, they need to be groomed properly. You can purchase Chinchilla combs online, or specifically from JAGS. There are four different types of grooming combs: they are numbered 1 to 4, where #4 comb has the largest spacing between each prong, all the way to #1, which is very fine. While grooming, you hold your chinchilla properly by it’s tail so you do not get the grease from your hands into the chin’s coat. You start grooming from the butt-end to the head, carefully flipping the comb outwards to remove all of the dead fur. You go through the different combs and there are a few other tricks in removing the excess hair. If you need any help or would like us to show you how, please feel free to ask!
If you have a male chinchilla, you should perform a hair ring check about once a month. If you click on the following link, Chin Hair Ring Clip, you can see how this is performed.
Thanks to Kindra of Spoiled Chins for the Chin Hair Ring Clip.