People always tell me, if I don't want the animals to be used for breeding, I should put right on the ads, "not for breeding." But I don't, and there actually is a reason why (and it's not my dislike of typing one extra sentence). Say someones looking for a white chinchilla to breed. They see one and it says "not for breeding, pet only." They may figure, "hey, I'll make sure I tell her, we don't have another chinchilla, only this one, and if she asks, we're not going to breed." You may think I'm kidding, but I've probably met more dishonest people through the rescue than I've met anywhere else. So, I don't have it in the ad. But there's the question in the adoption form -- "do you plan to breed?" If they have no reason to lie, they put down yes or no. The other day, I got an email from people who wanted pictures of Prim, one of our white rescue chinchillas. Wanted to know the price. Didn't seem to care anything bout the chin except white and price, which immediately set off warning bells. They filled out the adoption form, got it back to me, along with an email stating that they wanted to know right_away if they were approved. Looked it over.. they want to breed... "once." Uh-huh. And their cage would never have been approved as it was like guinea pig cage sized, no shelves or anything, and I bet you any money that it was not baby-safe. I nicely emailed back saying, "hey, this is a rescue, we do not adopt out rescues to breeding homes as we do not know genetic history or backgrounds, and we already have enough chins at the rescue we don't need anyone else just breeding for 'cute babies.'" I didn't say exactly that, I worded it nicer, but got the jist through. Told em that we have some pedigreed chins if they're wanting to breed, or they need to find another breeder if we don't have what they want. I have almost no doubt I will not hear back.
And here's the thing -- say they were to email back and say, "ok, we decided not to breed." Too late. Once they've said it once, if they try to convince me that they're not going to, I tend to lean towards the "they're just saying that so I adopt them the chin." I could be wrong, but I'd rather a chin stay here longer to find a home than one to a home that just wants to breed with no care for genetics or anything other than cute babies. The same goes for money. If you tell me you "can't afford" a cage more than $25, I'm not going to believe you two days later when you tell me that you can afford vet bills. At least, it's unlikely. I've let people through who have credit cards and say they will charge vet care... but typically, those people aren't trying to cut my prices in half. If you come up and want me to lower the chin from $100 to $50 and the cage from $175 to $100 and give you a 50% discount on supplies, sorry, but nothing you say is going to make me think you can (or even would want to) afford vet bills. I dunno if I posted about this, but I had someone awhile back tell me that a $40 guinea pig was too expensive. But then was asking about a chin two days later. If the pig is too expensive, they definitely cannot afford a chin. But man did they try to convince me!
Another thing -- if the animals are listed on the site as "Chevy and Ford" or "Louie and Mr. Jingles" -- the "and" signifies that they are a pair. This means, you cannot adopt only one. So, if you email asking for pictures of only one, I will send you pictures of both and inform you that they are a pair and must go together. Just so you know. If they can be adopted separately, they will have separate bullet points on the website. Simple as that.
Also... I have no idea if any of your chins will get along with another chin. I can't tell you how many emails I get asking if someone's chin would like a buddy. Not to sound rude, but... how would I know? I have chins here that I can't predict if they'll get along with another chin without trying, all I can do is guess if I've never met yours. Sure, I can tell you that we do introduce old chins to old chins, and it is possible... but I still can't tell you if your old chin will want a buddy.
Moving along... I'm starting to think some people I adopt to are idiots in disguise. I am going to paste an email below, and if it's yours, I'm not sorry I'm posting this, because you should know better. Here's the email:
It's [person] again. I was looking at your website and saw you have a 18 week old feamale chinchilla for sale. I have a couple of question for you. I have a 10 month old chin at home and he is a male if I cage him with the 18 week chin female will she get pregnant? I was just wondering do you think my 10 month old chinchilla will like a cage mate? What do you think if we can do a test run and see if they get along or not? Would we get more pellets, bag of hay and another toy if we buy the 18 week of chin?
Really?!?
My response:
If you cage this female with your male, she will almost definitely get pregnant, and at her age, that typically results in death. I got in a chinchilla her age that was pregnant a few years back, she was about the size of this one -- way too small to even consider breeding -- she had the babies, they ripped their way out of her, causing internal bleeding. We took her in for an emergency spay to try to stop the bleeding and save her. She lived through the surgery, but died overnight, and all the babies died as well. To the tune of about $800 trying to save her. Long story short -- horrible horrible idea to put a female this young with a male. They're intelligent, but at the end of the day, they are animals and don't understand they should wait to breed until they're older.
As for whether he wants a buddy -- that depends on him. Some chins like company, some don't, but you don't know until you try. If you just want a buddy vs. a chin to breed, you'd want to get a male though. I have chins coming out my ears lately because of people keeping males and females together and letting them breed one after another, when typically, those chins would get along just fine with a same sex buddy. Now, if you did want to breed, you could get this female, but you would want to keep her separate (and I mean completely separate -- no playtimes, no contact) from your male until she's about a year old. We typically wait until at least a year to put females into breeding because they need to be large enough and mature enough to actually be able to handle having babies safely.
I'm sorry, but we are definitely not doing a test run to see if your male gets along with this female. As noted above, it would be detrimental (potentially deadly) to the health of the female to be put with a male anytime in the near future, and I won't risk her health and her potentially getting pregnant at an age where she would definitely have difficulty having babies as she is still a baby herself.
If you were to get her, she would come with 2 pounds of pellets, a kit goodie bag, and a hanging chew toy. That's what all our babies come with. If you got a bag of hay with your previous chin, you must have purchased it separately, cause we've never included hay with our chins.
I don't think I need to further explain that one.
Moving right along... if I email you and tell you I will be out of town until a certain date.. emailing the day before that certain date, telling me you really need the stuff, can I hurry it up... will not get me emailing you a shipping quote (or whatever it is you want) any quicker, ESPECIALLY if I actually DO need to be home to do it. I can't quote you shipping for 20 items from an expo, sorry. For one hidey house? Maybe. Lots of different items that are going to require a large box and probably weigh in excess of 15 pounds? I'm not even going to try to guess. And I'm not driving home early to do so. Sorry. Patience, people.
Further... price does not change just because you email me. Occasionally, I goof on price. One ad will say $100, another says $75 (for the same chin, just on different websites/listings). I admit, it's happened before. If you saw the $75 ad, fine, it's $75. No big deal. And those emails I understand, because people see two prices and don't know which is correct. Let's just say, though, you email me and say, "hey what's the price of chinchilla x?" Assuming this chinchilla has ads up (which it almost always does), I will take the time to go look at each and every ad to see if there is a price discrepancy. Once in a blue moon, there is.... 99.9% of the time, there is not. Which makes me think that you saw the price at $100 and think that emailing me will get me to be like "oooh interest!!!" and drop the price. Not how it works. You saw that chin listed as $100 everywhere... guess how much she is? Yup, $100.
And let me just add that if your only concern is price... that's not a good way to start off. I understand the concept of wanting a good deal, and I'm sure some of you have been around when I've bought 10 beds for the prairie dogs at once cause they were a good deal. But if you somehow get me thinking that you care too much about the price, that's not a good thing. Especially since our prices aren't high to start with.
I think that's about it for the other things at the moment. Will post about the expo (which I didn't see anyone I knew at -- doesn't anyone want to come out and support us??) later sometime.
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