Mary recently wrote to us:
My granddaughter has a chinchilla she has had for awhile. There are now small flies around the cage and on his droppings. What is the problem and had can I get rid of the flies?
Our advice for Mary:
We haven't had to deal with flies so these suggestions are based on what we would do rather than actual experience.
The challenge with getting rid of flies is that you need to get rid of ALL of them at the same time or else they'll just breed and re-establish their numbers. With that in mind, it's important to find all the places where the flies are living such as in the bedding, food dishes, food containers, cardboard boxes, etc. If possible, dispose of all of these items if the cost isn't prohibitive to replace them. At the same time, clean the cage and clean the room that the cage is in.
One more thing that might help is putting out fly paper. Be VERY careful where you place these so that they're out of reach of your chinchilla. Ideally, remove them from the room when your chinchilla are running around just to be extra safe.
Entries (RSS)
August 9th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Flies!!!!
We don't want to be hard here, but keeping your chins home CLEAN is as important as feeding and excersise including sand bathing. We are home breeders and our cages are cleaned out daily, normaly in the evening when the chins are out excersising and having their daily bath. Once a month the cages are stripped and disinfected using a rodent cage cleaner that can be purchased from any good pet store.
October 8th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
I ditto what Ray and Brenda said.That's what we do too.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I know what I would do, clean out the cage as quickly as possibe! Put out fly paper, and definatly clean your chinchilla!
Best of luck!
Carly