Let’s start off by saying unless you are breeding extremely rare black, or albino chinchillas, you’re not going to be able to sell them more than $50 to $150 each. Where a normal chinchilla female will birth a normal 1-3 chinchillas about every 4 months or 120 days, I have had them as soon as 100 days. Please breed out of love for your pets, and not just to gain a small profit and make sure that you can afford a chinchilla and take care of their babies properly if you are interested in their breeding.
Have Proper Aged Chinchillas:
For a female chinchilla to be able to properly have babies without any complications or dangers to her health, she should at least be 8 months old, weighing from 550 to 600 grams. If she is younger than that, you definitely run an increase in risk to her health and her future babies’ health.
The male chinchilla needs to be around 6 months or older. For the male, it doesn’t really matter how young or old he is, because he doesn’t need to gestate a baby for 4 months.
Introduce The Pair:
With a new pair of chinchillas who are not accustomed to each other, you need to introduce them to each other slowly. Put the two cages next to each other for a week and see how they do. Normally chinchillas will get used to each other, it just depends on how they feel towards their potential mate. Sometimes it can take a couple of days where they behave, to a month.
If they have stopped making noises at each other, and have stopped getting so excited it is time for you to put them in the same cage. The reason you take so long in introducing them is that if they fight, it can stress out the female in particular, which is bad if you plan to breed them.
They Will Mate:
I have never raised a chinchilla pair that did not breed with each other. In severe cases, such as when the chinchillas don’t have natural light and daylighting, they might not be prone to breed, however, if you have a nice clean cage, water, and food they will end up breeding with each other.
Check the Female:
If you are curious to see if the pair has mated or not you can always take a look for yourself. After chinchilla intercourse, the female will form a mucous plug to keep the male chinchilla’s semen in her, so it doesn’t fall out. You can gently pick up the female, hold her away from you, lift up her tail, and take a look to see if it has formed.
Remove the Boy:
If you are aware of the breeding date, about 114 days from then, or 4 months the female will likely give birth. Make sure to remove the male from the environment weeks before you are expecting the babies to be born because the female can become pregnant again immediately, which is not good for her health, or her next batch of kits. Give her a month or two resting time before you have her breed again.
Taking Care of the Litter:
This is the easy part. Once the babies are birthed, they are up and moving around in minutes. They are ready to go from the moment of delivery, but they do like to ween off the mother, or you get chinchilla formula as a substitute if you would like to take some stress off of the new mother. Make sure that the cage is kept extra clean and there are no sharp objects to hard the new littler.
When to Separate:
It is your responsibility as their owner to make sure that these babies are not left with the mom, or father for too long. If they are left with the mother for half a year, the baby males will be able to impregnate their own mother and lead to a birth-defect prone litter. So make sure to have another cage ready, or have them sold before the time 6 months rolls around.
Rehoming:
If you choose to sell to a pet store your best chance on getting the most value out of your chinchillas would be to get store credit. It may not be solid cash, but it would be more if you just asked for flat out cash. Generally, you would get about $20 dollars more per chinchilla in store credit. You would be able to purchase lots of food, other pets if you desire, or just upkeep your other chinchillas.
Your other option would be to choose to sell them independently. There are several ways you can maximize your profit with this. My best results have come from the newspaper under “pets.” If you have 2 kits and want to sell them for $100 each, advert. as such, and wait for someone who will pay full price. I have gotten around 15 calls per add I’ve put in the paper, and can always find people who are willing to pay full price.
Also, if you are wanting to try it, Craigslist is another one I have gone through, so I don’t have to pay the $15 fee of putting the ad in the paper. However, with this, you will have people wanting them for half the cost, or a cage included, or people who even want you to give them away for free. Craigslist can be more of a hassle, but you do avoid the posting fee.