The following is a list of items that should be kept on hand at all times and their use.
- Emergency Phone Numbers - have your veterinarian’s phone number and pager in an easy to find location.
- Sterile Droppers or Syringes- for hand-feeding, giving oral medicines and eye drops.
- Critical Care - A food replacement product that is used when hand-feeding sick chinchillas that can not or refuse to eat on their own.
- Metamucil - Mixed as a mash, is used to help with constipation, fur build up in the GI tract, and impaction.
- Tinactin or Desenex Foot Powder - Mixed with the dust bath, these items are used to prevent or treat ringworm.
- Corn Starch or Flour - Helps to stop bleeding on clipped nails.
- Fruit Flavored Tums - Used to give extra calcium to pregnant or nursing mothers, or chinchillas with bone injuries. (There is currently some controversy over this, since too much calcium may cause bladder stones.)
- Pedialyte - Used to replace fluids and electorlytes that are lost through diarrhea, shock, and heat stress.
- Saline Solution - for cleaning wounds prior to dressing them and for rinsing debris out of the eye.
- Towels - To place in the bottom of the cage for close monitoring or wraping up the chinchilla to administer medications or to hand feed. Paper towels can also be used in the bottom of the cage to monitor feces and urine output.
- Small Pair of Scissors
- Cotton Swabs
- Sterile Pads and Bandages
- Gauze
- Tweezers
- Unsented Wet Wipes - For cleaning soiled fur.
- Marble Slab or Tile - For cooling down chinchillas if it is too hot in the home, cool in the freezer first.
- Canned Goats Milk - For hand feeding kits in the event that the mother dies, her milk does not come in, or doesn't have enough milk for all of her kits.
- Heating Pad- For keeping kits and sick chinchillas warm.
- Carrier - For taking sick chinchillas to the vet.
- Marker - For marking the water level on water bottles, to make sure a chichilla is drinking.
- Jar of baby food (squash flavored) or canned pumpkin - to feed sick chins. It is often mixed with ground pellets or Critical Care.
- Infant Medicine Dropper- For administering medications.
- Baby Gas Drops (Simethicone) - For breaking up trapped gas when treating bloat.
- Blue Kote - For treating cuts, scratches and fungus.
- KY Jelly - For removing hair rings.
- Chamomile and Mint Teas - to sooth upset tummies and encourage drinking.
- Karo Syrup - To rub on the gums of chinchillas with low blood sugar.
