Bathing & Grooming: One or two times a week your chinchilla needs a bath, BUT DO NOT USE WATER!!!! Water is actually not good for their fur. (If they do get wet it is best to towel dry them) Chinchillas use a very fine powder made from volcanic ash to bath in (this dust is commonly called ‘chinchilla dust‘ of ‘chinchilla bath‘ . Basically all you need to do is make the bath available to them and they will go to it on their own and start rolling around in it (possible the cutest and funniest thing that chinchillas do). There are many types of containers in which you can put the dust bath in to (plastic bath houses, ceramic bowls, show boxes, cat littler pans… etc.). What worked for me was a large ceramic bowl that I placed in an even larger box. I did this because as the chinchillas roll about in the dust, the dust in turn gets thrown everywhere.

If you decide to put the dust bath into their cage do not keep it in there for a long time. If it is in there for too log you chinchilla will poop and pee in it. Some owners will scoop the dropping out of the dust and continues to re-use it. Now, dust bath can be re-use many times as long as there is not droppings in it. For me, by not putting the dust bath in their cage and only letting them have access to it during play time, I was able to keep the dust almost poop-free.

As for grooming the chinchilla, this is something that can be done after you chinchilla is conferrable with you to let you hold it. At this point you can use a light bristle brush to brush their fur. You can do this maybe once every one to two weeks.

Two other things you might wan to keep in mind is: One, if a mother chin just gave birth, wait at least 10 days before her bath. Second, if you keep more than one family of chins in more the one cage (like they should be), use separate dust bath as this will reduce the chance of spreading around any illnesses.