Bugs

12th July 2009

in the Chinchilla Food!

This is the second time it has happened to me:
I normally buy Mazuri pellets from an online store (which will remain unnamed). Mazuri pellets only come in 2.5-lb or 25-lb packagings. Obviously 2.5 lbs is too little to buy at a time, but 25 lbs is too much. The online supplier I buy Mazuri from sells 10 lbs, so that’s what I normally buy. My first time, after a couple of months of storing the pellets in an airtight resealable plastic bag, I discover these little tiny bugs about the same size as the pellet powder (almost the same color as the pellets, too). Because I knew that I couldn’t possibly pick at every little bug, I threw away the rest of the pellets & bought another 10 lbs of Mazuri from the same supplier. This time, I stored the pellets in a plastic tupperware. Same thing happened again, the same tiny bugs were found in the pellets!

I’m thinking that the bugs I found were mites. I highly doubt that they come from my apartment (I only see these bugs in the pellets & not anywhere else around my apartment, plus I don’t find myself itching). I’m thinking, since the supplier must have split the pellets that I buy from the original 25-lb packaging, if he had carelessly stored the rest, bugs could have access to the rest of the pellets supply.

ps: while I’m waiting for the newly ordered Mazuri to arrive (from a different supplier, of course), I temporarily replaced the chinchilla food with another brand. They don’t even want to touch it! These chinchillas think they’re too good to be fed inferior pellets (Mazuri has the highest protein content of 20% in chinchilla pellets that I know of, whereas commercial brands found in petstores contain 14-18% of protein).

Posted in Chinchilla care | Comments (3)

3 Responses to “Bugs”

  1. wiffy Says:
    July 13th, 2009 at 11:47 pm

    My hams loved mazuri pellets too, and because I only had one or two hamsters at one time, I stayed the excess for a looong time in the freezer, no sign of bugs so far. Maybe change supplier and see if it’s the problem with the shipment? With bugs, I think the protein content is higher than 20% for your chins, haaa :x

  2. Furrybutts Says:
    July 16th, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    Eew, I would throw pellets away too if I found bugs in them. You could be right, since they’ve been repacked, the bugs could’ve infested the pellet during the repacking process. Hope your new Mazuri stock is bug free :)

  3. admin Says:
    July 19th, 2009 at 3:46 am

    That’s true, with the bugs the protein content would’ve been higher than 20% :-D
    I’m going freeze my excess Mazuri stock this time around.
    Yep, the new Mazuri is bug free!

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