Chinchillas = High Maintenance?

So, I wanted to post about this really quick, because I've been reading on a lot of facebook groups lately that chins are high maintenance. 

Really?  This is news to me.

I spend more time and effort keeping the guinea pigs, rats, and rabbits, and prairie dogs alive / fed / cages cleaned, than I do the chins.  Combined.  Like right now, I have a total of about 10 guinea pigs, 13 rats, no rabbits (well, none here), and 2 prairie dogs.  So, "other animals" comprises 23 animals at the rescue, which account for a whopping total of 5 guinea pigs cages, 3 rat cages, and 1 prairie dog cage -- so 9 cages total.

Compare that to about 150ish chinchilla cages, which house about 175-200 chinchillas at any given time.  Yes, I have help cleaning those, but... the point I want to make here is this -- it takes me more effort to clean / feed / care for those 9 "other animal" cages than it does the 150ish chin cages. 

There's several reasons why, but the main two reasons are diet and cleanliness.  The guinea pigs need their daily veggies, which usually is broken up into a morning and evening feeding.  They also go through mountains of hay, also given morning and evening.  The prairie dogs have to have a variety of food, so their dishes take longer to replenish, just like the guinea pig ones do.  The food bowls for all of these animals (rats too!) get a lot ickier, a lot quicker, than the chinchilla bowls, and need washed more often.  For cleanliness, the guinea pig cages -- though they are (for most cages), AT LEAST 2x the size of most of the chinchilla cages, they are sopping wet if I wait 7 days to clean them.  If I clean chin cages at 7 days... eh, they could use a cleaning, but they're not bad.  They're not wet wet.

Compare this to the chinchillas.  They get their bowls and water topped off once a day.  Washed when needed.  They get hay twice weekly, and they only need it twice, because I put in enough to last a few days, and then repeat a few days later (if I was going to do this with guinea pigs, I'd have to stuff the cage with hay, so the guinea pig couldn't move.... and the next morning, there'd be a tiny pile of hay left, lol).  They get their cages cleaned every 7 days, usually on a Sunday evening, and are good until the next Sunday evening.  I don't have to cut up veggies for them on a daily basis, I don't have to pick off icky parts of the veggies if they're starting to go bad.  Most of their feeders are on the outside of the cages, so I don't have to open every cage to feed them. 

I do understand that a lot of pet people take out their chins for playtime, or take them out to handle them... and I do understand that that adds time.  However.... I still don't consider them high maintenance.  The guinea pigs, which I pretty much have to clean cages for 2x a week, plus 2x daily veggies and 2x daily hay... plus constant washing of the food bowl / pigloo due to it getting icky, plus nail trims, plus refilling those HUGE water bottles daily (which would last a chin probably 2 weeks)... that is high maintenance... sometimes I wonder what people are doing for their pets, that they consider them high maintenance.  Feel free to enlighten me, but I honestly do spend more time for the care of those 9 cages, than I do for all of the chin cages, on a daily basis.  So... not high maintenance to me.