Always Choose Chinchilla Products
While other rodents don’t necessarily need a sand bath, it is a daily necessity for chinchillas, and so they need a certain quality sand to help them effectively clean themselves.
While many people may buy any old bag of sand for their rodent, chinchilla owners must always buy bathing sand that expressly labels it as being suitable for chinchillas! That way you are ensuring your chinchilla is always getting the best possible care, as normal sand or sand for reptiles will likely not be able to penetrate a chinnie’s fur or absorb dirt and oil properly.
Size
While mammoth packages of chinchilla dust are available, just remember these are very heavy, annoying to store and not necessarily practical. Chinchillas require a bath of just around an inch to two inches deep, which isn’t very much sand at all!
Dust-free
Rolling around in sand can often create a kind of sandstorm or dust around a chinchilla, especially if the grains are incredibly fine. This often causes a lot of mess and can occasionally irritate a chinchilla’s eyes and be breathed in by them, which isn’t particularly healthy.
Natural Ingredients
You want to try and find a product which uses natural pumice or ash as its ingredients as this most closely reflects the terrain chinchilla’s use to clean themselves in the wild
Soft Grains
Too gritty and too coarse a mixture will not be comfortable for your chinchilla and in a worse case scenario might actually damage their skin or fur!
Packaging
This might not seem like a very important aspect when buying chinchilla sand, but remember, sand is a messy substance which gets everywhere, and so having secure packaging is an absolute must!
The best and most secure packaging are plastic bottle containers or plastic sealed wrapping, unfortunately though, you’ll find many high quality products using paper packaging, which has a higher risk of leaking sand.
