"The Peewee"

Here is a 3 week old with our 2 week old peewee

Hi all. I have finaly had a chance to fill in some of the details. Our peewee is 4 weeks old today the 2nd. i didn't get a weight today, but she is gaining. She weighed 34 grams last saturday and is probably atleast 15 grams heavier. She has been slow to gain weight, butshe is finally making up for it. She is still very underweight for her age, but she is strong and very lively and a happy little chinnie!

Now as for her mother, Fütball, she was pregnant with 5 kits, 3 on one side and 2on the other. It seems as though Fütball, who bye the way was a grey female, had one kit mummify inside of her. She went into labor probably a week or two early judging bye the hair on the 3 that were born. She had 3 babies and it took her all day to push them out. 1 grey female, 1 beige female and our peewee. We knew she still hadbabies in her. We could feel body parts inside.

So we waited to see if another baby possibly 2 were going to come out. Nothing.By now it is late saturday night and it is impossible to get a vet on sunday,so we had to wait till monday to take Fütball to the vets. The vet took herright in and performed a c-section immediately. She had 1 mummified baby and one veryabsorbed baby, which was in 7 pieces. The vet cleaned her out and she came home.

One of the conditions of her survival hinged on her eating. This was verycrucial the vet said. It seems that a chinchilla's liver, maybe other animals, will store fat and balloon, such as her's did, in which case death is iminent. Fütball didn't even last 24 hours. She had rather of choked to death than eat anything.As for the other sibblings. The grey died that day and the beige a day or 2 later.

Well our peewee is a normal sized baby chin now. She is 8 weeks old today and has all appearences of a normal chin. When I get a chance to make some repairs to my video camera, I will update the photo's here. Peewee is probably twice the size, now, of the pic shown here. She currently weighs 189 grams. On 5/5 she weighed only 67 grams.

Gradually peewee is turning out to be what looks like a silver. Only time will tell. The white spots in the pic are slowly fading into a silver wrap all over.

Probably peewee will be one of the best pet chinchilla's we have ever had born, after the amount of one-on-one attention she has received during her care.

Shawn Poland

Overlook Chinchilla's