Monday, August 27, 2018

Not Eating Food

Someone asked about this in an email, and I thought it was a good quick useful topic, so I thought I'd post here.

In the email, they specified that their chin had stopped eating pellets, but was eating still the hay and the treats, and they wanted to know if I had any thoughts on this.

My first thought would be teeth problems / dental issues.  Here's why.  Think about it this way.  If your teeth hurt, you're still going to need to eat, but are you going to choose to eat applesauce or hard candy?  Assuming you're planning on biting the hard candy... that would hurt your teeth, correct?  So you'd eat softer foods. 

The same is often true of our furry friends.  If their teeth hurt, the first thing to go as far as them eating, will be the hardest thing that we give them to eat.  Out of pellets, hay, and treats, the hardest thing to crunch down on would be the pellets.  So, those would be the first thing they'd stop eating.  Eventually, the hay would be next to go, followed by the treats.

I advised this person to get the chinchilla's teeth and roots checked, as that would be the main guess as far as what's wrong.

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