Hi
First time poster in here. Sorry it's long I'm trying not to drip feed.
These are not my first chinchillas.
I have 2 chinchillas when purchased thought they were girlies and discovered a couple of weeks back that they are actually Mr Chinchillas.
The reason I discovered it was that I thought one of them was shrinking, they are brothers and one has always been larger than the other but is now smaller.
After checking him over, his teeth and paws etc I could find nothing wrong (apart from finding dangly bits when there shouldn't be any) and him having a wet chin, called slobbers and indicative of teeth problems.
I made up a solution of wet food for him and proceeded to syringe it into his mouth and have continued to do this 3 times a day every day, he has gained weight (a whole ounce) in 2 weeks. He has 20/30 mls of slop food each feeding. He isn't interested in solid food and last night wouldn't/couldn't eat a raisin (although not seen him eat one for a while).
I am very aware that if he isn't eating anything solid he won't be grinding down his teeth, incidentally his brother won't touch the slop food at all - although I'm not sure if that means he isn't hungry or he thinks it's disgusting.
Both are displaying normal behaviour, bouncing around, picking spats at each other (imagine loud squeaking and the odd slap to face - nothing new as they did this before) sleeping through the day and playful at night, inquisitive and little bleeders if they aren't supervised when out the cage properly.
I'm posting to ask - should I now consider taking him to the vets to get them to have a look ? Although last time I took one of my chins they looked the info up online/from a book.