Every owner of pet chinchillas wants them to be tame enough to pick up and hold. We're no exception. However, chinchillas in the wild are prey for many predators and are conditioned to be cautious.
But all is not lost. With a little time and patience, you can tame your chinchilla enough so that it doesn't run and hide when you approach. The trick is to reward good behavior with a treat such as a raisin. At the beginning, good behavior is something as simple as coming up to you when you sit still near them. Over time as your chinchillas become comfortable with your presence, you reward them for crawling on your hand or leg. Eventually they'll get used to this activity too.
You may wish to someday move beyond taming your chinchilla and enter the realm of actual training. Like taming them, training starts off with simple tasks each of which are rewarded. For example, we've trained our chinchillas to return to their cage at a certain time every night where they'll receive a treat. This is very helpful to us since it keeps us from having to chase them and it also means that we don't unnecessarily stress our chinchillas from such chasing.
We've read about others that have managed to train their chinchillas to jump and roll on demand, but we've yet to see proof of such successes.
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September 7th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
a chinchilla generally does not like to be touched, but some chinchillas, after becoming attached to their owners( whitch usually only happens if it rarely sees anyone other than the owner) will allow , and in fact, enjoy, having their throats rubbed and in some cases( like my chin, an ebony called guinness) actually like to be held and petted on their back. it is possible to train your chinchilla to play simple games with you, such as "tug of war" (guinness loves doing this with the drawstrings to my windowblinds). there really is no set way to train your pet, once it(and this may never happen at all, through no fault of the owner) becomes accustemed to you. my chin has no set scheduale for feeding( he always has a full bowl) and i let him out at least twice a day, sometimes as long as 6 hours. as i am always in the room when he is let out of his cage, he has become somewhat attached to me and will come when i call his name, follow me around the room, and jump all over me to get my attention so ill play with him. he will try to climb my pant legs sometimes, until i put him on my shoulder and occasionally even grooms me. im really not sure why he does this, i did nothing to train him, i just sorta treated him like you would a spoiled cat. if anyone can explain his odd( if lovable) BEHAVIOR TO ME, ID BE GRATEFUL.
August 20th, 2008 at 8:14 am
i taught my chinchilla to run up walls
and now by himself h will do back flips every time you say m Dogs name i dont no wh or how he managed to learn this by himself, and when i had two chinchillas you clicked them twice and they would jump over eachother i no this sounds hard to belive but i do not have two chinchillas no more but when i get a new one i shall teach them to do it and i will post a video for my eevidence
August 15th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
I got my chinchilla when she was 6 months old, now she is 15 months old. What should I reward her with for doing a good thing?
August 11th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
I have trained 1 of my chinchillas to give me a kiss before he goes home he also gives high fives, nock on doors, and sometimes when he's in a good mood i can tell him stand and he will get up on his hind legs. But I have only been able to do that with one of my chinchilla the other two just don't know how and i can't get them to.
August 11th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Monica, you can't house train a chinchilla. They will only urinate on the bedding (I don't know the reason of that, but they just do that by their own, with no training), but they will always poop everywhere they go. I heard an oppinion, that maybe they don't even realize they're dropping a poop.
@Adriana: our chins return to their cage as soon as we tell them to do so, because they're always getting a treat after that. For that to work, you have to keep telling them to return (some short "magic" word will do), when they do reward them. If they don't listen to you then hold a treat in the cage, eventually they'll figure out what you want. Keep doing that every time you let them out, and soon they'll know the drill