hello

[terry]

just thought id say hello, i have 3 chipmunks at the moment. lilly (white female) summer (white female) and charlie (brown male), the two girls are around 10 weeks, and charlie is 6mths old.

excellent website and very informative.


terry

[jcoombes2002]

They look gorgeous, I have two, I try to put some pictures up but to big to put on so I am afraid to say none from me - this site is great and very informative. I am new to all this so Nate has been a godsend!

[jcoombes2002]

Yeah, I can put these on the first two are of our girl Squeak and the other is our boy Zippy. Our Babies!

[terry]

just thought id up date, found some more chipies needing a good home.........soooooooooooo... now i hve nine chipmunks, a few need some real tlc , but are looking alot healthier already !!

[Nate]

Thanks to you both for uploading your photos, I never get tired of looking at chipmunks. I know of other people who can't have chipmunks themselves but still like to see photos. Chipmunks were born to be photographed.

Terry, four more chipmunks is quite an expansion to the family, what predicament were they in to need a new home? I ask because it will be of interest to others thinking about keeping some, useful to know what can happen to make an owner need to part with them. From what you say they were not in the best of health, it's such a pity they were not given the best of everything.

I've finished the links page on the main site, but need to fill it out with more links. I'm keen to build up a list of vets in the UK which have had at least some experience with Chipmunks. When I started keeping chipmunks it would have saved me a lot of time to be able to find a chipmunk friendly vet. I nearly began to believe what some vets were telling me in my search, that chipmunks could not be neutered. I know Julie has a vet with chipmunk experience. So if either of you, or anyone else visiting this site knows of vets in the UK that work with Chipmunks, please use this forum to post their address. It doesn't matter if you don't know their website address, with just a name and a location I should be able to find out the rest.

Given a little more time I will add a form to the links page so anyone can suggest a link to add. But for now I'm working on a page about breeding chipmunks. It's nearly all written, but I'm a slow writer, and I am double checking the facts on growth and other things. Next page after that will probably be toys, which is really going to be about aviary furniture and how to save money, then on to pages about taming and grouping/fighting.

[jennyb]

Here is a photo of my Cinnamon male Ginger. He is seven years old. I'm having trouble uploading pictures together so now i will try them separately to see if that works

[jennyb]

That worked, now here's a picture of young male Asriel

[jennyb]

This one is of Hazel, a seven year old female Cinnamon (Ginger's sister)

Apologies for three separate posts but i couldn't upload the pictures in one post, perhaps the pictures are too big, i've already altered the size a few times.

[Nate]

Jenny, thanks for persevering to upload your photos. I've now set up an email address for everyone to use who would find it easier just to send photos in as an attachment. Just remove the spaces from this email address 'photos @ super-chipmunks.co.uk', photos can be any size and format I will do the resizing, just let me know which post to add any photos to.

I'm interested to know how your three get on, as lots of people suggest that it's best to have more females than males. Is Hazel in charge of Asriel and Ginger, and I noticed that Hazel does not have the black fur marking just above her nose. I think mine do, I wonder if we are going to see more pronounced variations in chippie markings across the country as more people breed them.

[jennyb]

Hi Nate, Hazel, Asriel and Ginger all live separately but Hazel and Ginger do come out on free range together. Although they haven't lived together since babies Hazel and Ginger still have a bond and get on well, although if he does something to annoy her she lets him know, she is the boss. Hazel doesn't like Asriel unfortunately, tried them out on free range together and she bullied him and when out she will climb up his cage and bite him on the nose if he gets too close, so i doubt they will ever get on. Asriel now comes out on his own, i tried him out with Ginger once and they got on ok, Ginger left him alone so i may be able to get those two to come out together hopefully but for the meantime he will come out on his own.       

[jennyb]

Here is a picture of the two new Chipmunks, Pearl and Abigail (originally named Fudge, i kept Pearl's name as i felt it suited her). The two girls used to live with a family who were moving abroad and didn't think it would be fair on the Chipmunks to undertake a long journey. They were very sad to let them go especially the youngest daughter. The Chipmunks themselves took awhile to get used to us but slowly are. At their old house Abigail was the most friendly and very bold while Pearl was more nervous and kept a distance, now it's the opposite Pearl is the most friendly coming to the cage and taking nuts out of my hand, while Abigail tends to keep away, she did earlier this week take a couple of nuts but progress is slow. It did take Pearl about a week though before she started to take food from my hand as like Abi she did keep a distance at first and Abigail didn't leave the travel box for quite awhile then went straight to sleep and didn't get up until the next day in the afternoon so i was worried about her at first. Pearl had a little explore after coming out of the travel box then went to sleep and reappeared early the next morning. The two used to live in a large outside aviary so found it a bit of a shock moving into an indoor cage. Both are eating and drinking well. I hope they will be happy living with me. I will hopefully take some more pictures of both together as they get less nervous, they are a bit nervous of the camera at the moment, my other Chipmunks are not bothered by the camera at all.

I nearly called Abigail Chip as she looks just like my very first Chipmunk female!

[Nate]

Pearl and Abigail, good names I think, the white ones are quite like the colour of pearl to. Hopefully the old owners can drop by this board to see how the girls are getting on.

I bet they will appreciate being indoors, I found with mine any comfort going they will relish. Mine love dozing off on one of the radiators soaking in the heat.

I found mine get tamer when they are let out on free range, they seem to like to choose their time to decide when it's safe enough to jump on me. Some of mine took months to become really tame.

You're getting quite a collection now, glad I'm not the only one with the chipmunk bug 

[jennyb]

Hi Nate, thanks it took me awhile to decide on Abigail but i thought it sounded like a nice girl name. Yeah i think that's why they named her Pearl, it also sounds like a female name. Yeah i've got their e-mail address so am able to send them pictures so they can see how they are getting on. Really, kool not had that with mine, when they are out they have too much energy to rest, they just want to run around. They seem ok but not sure they are completely happy as Pearl bites the mesh of the cage, always in the same place and Abigail runs up and down the shelf most of the day, in a repeating pattern. Both are eating and drinking well and are healthy but i am abit concerned about their behaviour i don't want them to develop stereotypical behaviour and be unhappy. They stop their behaviour when i go over to their cage, they then come over to the mesh hoping to be given a treat, usually a nut. I'm making progress with Abigail as she comes over almost every time i visit now instead of keeping her distance and she takes the nuts out of my hand. Neither of them have used their wheel at all, i was hoping that they would as my other chipmunks love wheels and spend alot of time in them. I think their behaviour is due to living in less space than they were used to, they lived in such a large enclosure and now they have less space indoors. My other chipmunks are happy in their cages as they have never known bigger and have been brought up indoors.
Yes i do have quite a collection now but less than i used to, one time i had seven but that was about 7 years ago i think.
Most people on this forum seem to have outside enclosures and that is what i would like for mine, i have been thinking for awhile of getting something outside. I have looked at quite a few aviaries and found one that was 9 foot by 3 foot with a height of 6 foot, sounds a good size and it also comes with a external safety porch and was a resonable price too. Our garden is all grass so we would need to get a concreate base first and now as it will be winter soon it's a bit to late to get it sorted out for this year so we probably won't be able to get anything sorted until next spring at least. None of us are exactly good at DIY, my grandad built our first chipmunk cage so i think buying an aviary would be the best option.

[tarcus]

great that you are thinking of getting outdoor plot for your chips.
Could I suggest that you look for a handy person to make you a mesh floor for your aviary rather than concrete for the floor.
The advantages are great as most things dropped will grow through the mesh floor for your chips to eat fresh during the spring and summer.
It also makes it a little more like home from home for them, I find putting a layer of bark down helps control the grass from taking over while giving the chips something to bury in.

[jennyb]

Thanks for your advise Tarcus, i suppose the reason i thought of concreate rather than wire floor was i thought animals from outside would be able to dig under the wire floor and get near to the chipmunks which could pass diseases to them even if they couldn't get inside the enclosure but i suppose putting bark chippings or something on top would prevent them getting near to each other, unless the chipmunks dug down to the mesh of course.