Chinchillas need to constantly chew on things to keep their teeth healthy. Might as well have fun doing it, wouldn't you say? Here are some of the chew toys we've tried over the years.
Lava Bites
Lava Bites are little triangular stones made out of mineral lava. Each triangle is made with a small hole in the middle so that you can hang or place the triangle on a narrow rod for the chinchillas to chew. In our case, we just placed a triangle in their cage and within 3 days it was completely gone. Our chinchillas just loved it and left nothing but dust as evidence.
Build-n-Bites
Chinchillas need to have ready access to items they can chew on to keep their teeth from growing too long. Various types of wood such as apple are safe for this purpose. If you don't have access to the right kinds of wood, consider buying wood chews from a reputable pet supplier. Our chinchillas seem to enjoy the Build-n-Bites product although we also provide various other types of wood for them to chew on.
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All of the wood treats are really expensive and you have no idea what chemicals are used to make them those crazy unnatural colors. I use apple and pecan branches for my chins and save tons of money by picking and drying my own from the backyard. Many local apple/pecan orchards will also let you pick branches ( make sure they don't use pesticides on the trees and apples). I usually dry the wood in the sun, but sometimes let them have small apple branches fresh with one or two leaves, buds and flowers on for something different. I also use the apples from the trees to slice and dry for treats that are better on tummies than raisins. If you don't have your own tree you can stop and pick apples in a local organic orchard and ask them if you can take ( or they can cut for you) some branches for treats when you are buying a bushel of apples; they have to trim the trees down like crazy in the fall anyway, so you could try going then and asking for small branches that are going to be mulched or burned anyway. You can cut big branches into chips and cut skinny twigs into small sticks that can be carried around easily.
I don't care for those crazy colored things either! You just never know! I'm lucky! My grandpa has apple, plum and cherry trees! Gave Rin Chin Chin a stick and he went to town on it! I like to bake my branches, after being cut to size, in the oven at 450 degrees for 20 minutes before handing it to Chinny.
I have been reading about giving my chin a pumice stone(lava rocks) so I tried it. BEWARE: my chin started weezing and it scared the crap out of me. She's okay now.