So, we've had a lot of people lately coming by that mention they would like to see the place before they drop off their chin. In talking with a friend, she suggested that maybe these people are thinking of dropping off their chin here as more of dropping off the chin in a home, as opposed to a rescue. I suppose, since this is a home-based rescue (and we have foster homes as well), I can understand that. And of course, I have nothing to hide, so everyone is welcome to come see the place, before you entrust your baby to me.
We do have some general pics of our setup on the Chin Room page of our website -- click here. Do we have more cages than that? You bet! Are some of the cages smaller than that? Of course. The cages pictured (the ferret nations, critter nations, etc) are the cages we typically use to house the rescue chinchillas / owner surrenders (the ones that don't come with a cage). For people who bring in opposite-sex pairs, we separate those, and the female will go in a baby-safe cage until they have cleared pregnancy watch. We have less of those (pregnancy safe cages), so sometimes that chin will get the short end of the stick, and will end up in a smaller cage. We have typical guinea pig type cages... which we usually use for guinea pigs, but also chinchillas, depending on room, and we also have some smaller chinchilla cages with built in dusters, to help with any stress the chins might feel. Are these cages all chinchilla mansions, similar to how a chinchilla might live in a pet home? No. Am I ashamed of that? Heck no. This is a rescue. These chins are NOT meant to live here forever. This is meant to be a temporary home, while they find their forever homes. Would I like for them to all have huge cages? Of course! Thing is, there's only so many hours in the day, and I am only one person. I have one person who works for me, and some months it's a struggle to pay the bills, pay her, and feed / care for all the animals. Big cages would be great! But they would require more work, more people to do the work... and that's just not something we have here. For some people, I realize, the answer may be, take in less chins. Here's the funny part about that. We have expanded, and I have moved my breeders to Ohio... so that I can take in more rescues and have more time for the rescues... because there's already not enough chin rescues around. If we take in less, which sure, we could do... where do those other chins end up? That's what I worry about. We already get in quite a few chins from homes that mention they got one and it wasn't what they expected, or it was too much work, or what have you. If these people who are surrendering their chinchillas to us, now start re-homing them to the first person with $50... I'm not sure we wouldn't end up with the chin anyway... just from someone else down the line.
Want to see some of the other cages? We had a video made partly here awhile back, you can find it here -- starting at 3:06, there's a pan that shows about half of the rescue. In the video, on the far left, far right, and all the way back, you can see cages that look like this (with some variation), all those were breeder cages that are now gone, to make way for more pet cages to hold more rescues. Note, in the view the camera has, you can't even see our wall of FN's (6 along the back, plus guinea pig cages), which are the main big cages in the rescue. We also now have another FN on the front wall, which is our cage that was dedicated to Bonnie Reinhardt (see blog post here), and we usually have another pet cage up there next to it as well.
All the chins here have food and water, dust baths as needed, chew toys. Unfortunately, I can't always say the same about some of the chinchillas in their previous homes, before they came to us. That's a post for another day, but I'm often amazed how people don't give their chins some of the basic necessities.... and oddly enough, sometimes those chins will have huge cages... but nothing to chew on, and the person ran out of food a week ago, and finally decided to surrender, rather than go get another bag of food. But I digress.
At the end of the day, I do my absolute best for these furballs. Do I wish I had a million dollars and could do things better? Sure. In reality though, doing rescue doesn't make anyone rich, and we make do with what we have.
Do you have questions? I'm happy to answer them. Feel free to ask.
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