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What is a good brand of chinchilla hay?
The brand that I now recommend is called Kaytee. You can get a really great deal on it right now on Amazon, here. .
Besides just hay, Kaytee also has a wide variety of products for all sorts of different animals. Their Timothy Hay is all-natural and supportive of digestive health in chinchillas and other such small animals, like guinea pigs. It also comes in bags that are much larger than what other companies usually sell, so it lasts longer and will be cheaper in the long run.
Kaytee hay is fresh and doesn’t have any of the surprises that the Oxbow hay had. The timothy hay is soft and high in fiber, so it will be excellent in your pet’s environment as well as in their stomach.
If you want to take good care of your fluffy little pet chinchilla, you should buy Kaytee brand timothy hay.
Why do chinchillas need to eat hay?
Chinchillas are known to be herbivores, meaning that they only eat plants and plant matter. This means that nutritional hay should make up a large part of your chinchilla’s diet in order to help your pet with its health and happiness.
Eating hay helps to prevent obesity, disease, and boredom for your favorite fluffy friend. Since chinchillas’ teeth are constantly growing throughout their whole lives their teeth are kept from growing to a dangerous length or from developing a dental disease if they gnaw on hay for a majority of their diet.
The fiber in the hay also helps to ensure that your chinchilla has a healthy digestive system. By keeping hay in constant supply in your chinchilla’s habitat, you can keep your chinchilla as healthy as it can possibly be. However, you can’t just use the kind of hay you’d see in a farmer’s barn.
How to know if you have good hay?
First of all, and most importantly, any hay you may use needs to be extremely fresh. Stale hay is practically useless since it doesn’t help your chinchilla’s diet or environment. This means, no matter what kind of hay you buy, you need to refresh the hay in their cage or pen every 2 days at most. Then, your hay needs to be completely natural with no manufactured additives.
Chinchillas have extremely sensitive stomachs, and some can be picky, so having natural hay is your best bet that they will eat and get the fiber they need. You can buy pellets for other nutritional value. Hay should also be very soft since your pets will not only be eating it but also living in it. There is a wide variety of hay you can buy, but the best kind of hay, from any brand, is called timothy hay.
You can use other kinds of hay, like alfalfa hay, to add some more variety, but be careful when doing this to not upset your chinchilla’s delicate digestive system. By taking the time to do your research and setting aside the money to purchase top-quality chinchilla hay, you are being the best pet parent you can possibly be.
Why I no longer recommend Oxbow Animal Hay.
It saddens me that Oxbow is getting so many bad reviews lately. I have trusted Oxbow for all of their chinchilla supplies. However due to multiple reports of rocks, dead birds, dead mice, and other such horrible things found in several bags of this brand of hay, I can no longer recommend or support this brand of loose hay.
Obviously, this could be extremely bad for the health and safety of your little chinchilla and/or any other small animals that may need to use hay in their environment. Other online reports also say that when the hay arrives, it is stale and unusable, which is a waste of money since your pet is almost guaranteed not to eat it or enjoy having it in their area. Read on to see what I now recommend instead of the Oxbow brand hay.
