Avoid Fungus in Chinchillas

Video Transcript

This Lauren on behalf of Expert Village with "Fur Issues: Part Three". Fungus is a really nasty problem that happens sometimes, and if there's a herd of chinchillas it can definitely be passed through the entire herd. It's carried as spores in the air and also can be as a result of a chinchilla living in wet, damp, dirty conditions. Wet conditions can cause the fungus to grow on the skin and then it travels deeper and deeper into the skin making the hair fall out, becoming red and irritated. Even the whiskers can fall out at some point. The easiest place to spot fur fungus is on the tail or the head. It's going to look dry, red and irritated. At first it can be hard to tell a chinchilla that's chewing its fur, because of fur fungus or just because it's a chewer. The first step in treating fur fungus is to separate the infected animals from any others. You want to take them out of the room completely. You make sure that you have them in very sanitary conditions. Fungus travels through the air, so you want to be aware of that and sanitation is always your first concern. There are medicated fungus powders that you can use, even athlete's foot powder works sometimes. You want to mix that into their dust bath and alcohol can be dabbed on sparingly. This here is a chinchilla dust bath and then this is the dust that you would use to mix it in. I always recommend using the dust in the powder form. There is also a sand form, but that's pretty rough on their coats. So, what you would do is just to mix a little bit of the fungus powder in with this, put it here in the dust bath and let the chinchilla roll around. You can also dab a little bit of alcohol on the chinchilla, just do it very sparingly and carefully, because the alcohol over time can become an irritant to the skin. A veterinarian is also skilled in handling this kind of a problem, so you might want to consult with them. It's going to take a lot of patience and diligence to take care of the problem, but it is important that you get the fungus under control. Stay with us in the next segment and we are going to talk about spraying.

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