Before deciding to buy a chinchilla, there are several things you needed to be consider:

• They must be kept in cool and dry area. Temperature over 25 to 30 degree is not a good condition for a chin. If you were living in a tropical area, having a chin will not be a good choice.
• If you raise pets like dogs, cats, snakes or birds (owls), you should have them separate. They are natural enemies! I once heard that dogs can be very friendly with chinchillas, but who knows, hazards might happen anytime.
• Wild chins can reach an age of 8 to 15 years. As a pet, under the right and good living condition, they can survive from 18 to 25 years of age. You must prepare to take care of them through their live span.
• Chinchilla are active at night and dusk, they will not become lively till about nine. A chin will disappoint those who would like to have an active and playful pet at the daytime. However, they are ready to play with you when you got back home after work.
• Chins love to jump and hop, you got to have a big enough cage, which should have one or more stories in it for them to release their energy at night. If not, small cages will stress the creature to bite his/her fur.
• A chin is not a cat or a dog, they cannot be train, as well as litter train, but you can try to tame them to let you pet them. Most of the chins will become friendly to human within one or two months, but it really depends on the chin. Some chins are loners and they don’t even bother having fun with you or having a mate around him/her.
• Chinchillas like to chew or to sharp its incisors on your furniture, your piano, your wallet and even your paper – homework or document. They chew everything they think they can chew on, even your finger!!
• Chinchilla is a very energetic creature; they need a minimum one hour free run each evening to keep them healthy and happy. (I used to give them more than three hours free run every evening) You need to provide a large enough saved-place to let your chin run free. I advice you do not let your chins play in a place with furniture, paper, holes or wire in. Especially wire, since wire is toxic for chins, if they chew on it, they will need a period of time to recover.

If you agree and match the condition listed above, you are ready to have this amazing lovely furball to live with you.

If you want to keep a chin, it doesn’t matter for you to keep them in single or in pair or in colonies. Some chins appear to be a loner and some chins don’t. If you want to keep a chin singly, sex is not important. Since female usually keep for breeding, male is more often available in the pet store. If you decide to keep two chins, two females, a mother and a daughter can get alone well in the same cage. A mother and a son are not a good suggestion of living in the same cage because the son will try to mate his mother within 3 months old. Inbreed will be caused in this case. Two males, in most cases, will not get alone in the same cage easily. They may fight to injuries or possible to death!! Generally, a pair – a male and a female – will get alone quiet well in most cases. If you decide to keep a colony, if you got a substantially large cage, you can have, as many chins in the same cage as you want. However, no matter how many females you got in a cage, ONE MALE ONLY!!!! Also, two males and two females cannot put in one cage, EVER.

Choosing a chin is very important. You obviously want a healthy, happy, less nervous and calm chin as your pet. Crusts around nose, eyes and ears, watery eyes, nasal discharge, holes in fur, length of incisors, and soft dropping are signs of a ill chin. Also, if one of the chin in a group had a single symptom of disease listed earlier, other chins in that existing group may already have infected one another. If one chin is separate with other and the price of it is relatively cheaper than the other with the same color coat, DON’T BUY IT!! There must be some problem with that chin. Either he/she is older (over ten months), less friendly or ill.

For the price of chinchillas, it just vary on different pet store, chinchilla ranch, and countries. Usually, a standard grey is the least expensive among the other color. However, if the standard grey chin did carry a recessive gene, either violet, ebony, or charcoal, it is possible for those chin to be a expensive. For more information on the pricing, see Chinchilla price around the World.