Hay first: the base of every day
Hay is not a side dish for a chinchilla — it is most of the menu, and it should be available in a rack or pile at all times. Timothy hay is the standard everyday choice for adults: coarse, fibrous and low in calcium, it grinds down teeth that never stop growing and keeps a digestion designed for dry mountain forage working properly. Orchard grass and meadow hay make good variety alongside it — softer and sweeter-smelling, useful for tempting a picky eater back to the rack — while alfalfa is too rich in calcium and protein for a healthy adult and belongs to young, pregnant or nursing animals. Judge hay by smell and colour: it should smell sweet and look green-ish and dry; a dusty or musty bale gets refused for good reason.
Pellets: plain, measured, boring on purpose
Alongside the hay goes a small, measured portion of plain pellets made for chinchilla — typically a couple of tablespoons a day for an average adult. The key word is plain: uniform pellets mean the chinchilla eats the whole ration. Colourful mixes with seeds, dried fruit and puffed pieces invite selective feeding, where the animal picks out the fatty, sugary items and leaves the fibrous pellets behind, unbalancing the diet while appearing to eat plenty. Serve the pellets at the same time each day, remove yesterday's leftovers rather than topping up over them, and store the bag somewhere cool and dry so it stays fresh.
Water and the daily rhythm
Fresh water completes the menu — from a bottle checked daily for flow, or a heavy bowl if your chinchilla prefers one and does not foul it. Build the day around two touchpoints: a morning check (hay rack topped up, bottle working, yesterday's pellets cleared) and an evening feed as the chinchilla wakes up for her active hours, when the pellet portion goes in and a fresh handful of hay is added. Chinchillas eat through the evening and night in bouts, grazing hay between bursts of activity, so the rack should never be empty by morning.
Treats: rare, tiny and dry
The treat list for a chinchilla is short because her digestion tolerates richness badly. A single plain oat, a rose hip, a small piece of dried dandelion or a shred of plain shredded wheat, offered a few times a week at most, registers as a genuine prize to an animal whose world is hay. Fresh fruit, raisins and anything sugary or fatty stay off the menu entirely — the risk is not just weight but digestive upset in a gut built for fibre. If you use treats for training or bonding, take them out of the day rather than adding them to it: hand-feed the oat during out-of-cage time and let the pellet portion stay untouched.
A menu that survives a change of feeder
Chinchillas thrive on sameness, and the commonest way the menu drifts is a well-meaning helper adding extras or topping the pellet bowl to the brim. Writing the day down — unlimited timothy hay, measured plain pellets in the evening, water checked twice, treats a few times a week at most — as standing duties in KinsLe's Care Teams keeps every feeder serving the same complete menu, so the chinchilla's diet stays exactly as plain and fibrous as it needs to be.