Can chinchillas eat carrots?

Can Chinchillas Eat Carrots?

Chinchillas are rodents. Rodents eat carrots. What’s not to understand? As it happens, carrots are one of the worst food choices for chins…

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Chinchillas are rodents. Rodents eat carrots. What’s not to understand? As it happens, carrots are one of the worst food choices for chins…

Can chinchillas eat carrots? They can, but they shouldn’t. Carrots aren’t nutritionally adequate for chinchillas as they contain too much water, not enough fiber, not enough fat and not enough protein. Your chinchilla isn’t used to digesting vegetables so they will cause high levels of gas and bloating, which can be fatal for a chin. We recommend against feeding them in any amount. Feed your chinchilla healthy snacks like shredded wheat or rosehips instead.

The guide below looks at the specific nutritional content of carrots to explain what’s so unhealthy about them, and the negative health effects they can cause. Then for anybody who likes being contrary, we’ve made recommendations on how much carrot chinchillas can eatwhile none is best, you can at least limit their health effects by controlling portion size and frequency.


Can Chinchillas Eat Carrots?

Chinchillas can eat carrots, but they shouldn’t.

The idea that rodents should eat carrots is a very old one. Everybody’s familiar with Bugs Bunny eating carrots, which might be where idea came from. But whatever the case, they aren’t nutritionally suitable for chins (or other rodents, or rabbits for that matter).

Do Chinchillas Like Carrots?

If you give your pet chinchilla carrots to eat, either as a snack or as a core part of their diet, they’ll eat them. But the issue is that your pet doesn’t know what’s best for it. In that sense, carrots are a lot like snacks to chinchillas. Your pet will enjoy eating them, likely even more than hay and hay pellets, but they will have negative health effects.

Why Can’t Chinchillas Eat Carrots?

Can chinchillas eat carrots?

The key problems with carrots are that a) they are nutritionally inadequate, and b) they can cause or contribute to bloating, which is dangerous in chinchillas. These issues stem from the nutrients that are in carrots. So, even though they’re healthy for us, they aren’t healthy for chinchillas.

Nutrients in Carrots

To understand what’s wrong with carrots, you have to look at their detailed nutritional information. Below is a table with data from NutritionValue.org that lists the carbohydrates, sugars, fats, protein, water and calories you’ll find in carrots:

Nutrients Amount per 100g Requirements
Carbohydrate 9.6g 35g
Sugar 4.7g 5g
Fat 0.2g 2-4g
Protein 0.9g 16-21g
Fiber 2.8g 30g
Water 88.29g 10-15g
Calories 41 200

By far the most common nutrient in carrots is water, at 88g per 100g (or 88%). Chinchillas don’t need anywhere near this much water in their diets. Chins have adapted to eating dry foods and living in a dry environment, so are excellent at conserving water. That’s why a chin’s pee is such a deep yellow, even orange color. When you feed a chin food that has too much water in it, it can contribute to diarrhea. It also means that there’s less of the other nutrients that chinchillas need.

Carbohydrate, Sugar, Fat, Protein & Fiber in Carrots

The requirements listed in the table above are roughly accurate, and correspond to what chinchillas get from hay. Sources disagree on the exact amounts that are best, but what’s clear is that chinchillas thrive on a diet very high in fiber and reasonably high in protein, without cutting fat out completely. Chinchillas don’t need to cut out one nutrient or another like diet plans tell you to; they need a varied mix.

Carrots don’t meet these requirements. They have:

  • Less than a third of the carbohydrates that chinchillas need
  • Less than a tenth of the fiber chinchillas need
  • Less than a tenth of the fat chinchillas need
  • Far less than a tenth of the protein chinchillas need

This entirely rules out the idea of using carrots as a core part of your chinchilla’s diet or as a frequent snack. A food that provides little nutrients and is mostly junk that the body doesn’t need can be called things like ‘junk food’ or ’empty calories’, and both of these terms apply here.

While this is less of an issue if you feed carrots as a very infrequent treat, it’s still best to give snacks that have roughly the same nutritional profile as hay. There are lots of these, such as herbs or rose hips, which chinchillas thoroughly enjoy as snacks. They’re also just as cheap. There’s therefore no rationale behind feeding carrots either frequently or infrequently.

Vitamins and Minerals in Carrots

Carrots, and most vegetables, are known for their vitamin and mineral content. Here is another table with data from the same source that lists the vitamins and minerals carrots contain:

Vitamin/Mineral Amount per 100g
Vitamin A 16706 IU
Vitamin B2 0.066mg
Vitamin B3 0.983mg
Vitamin B5 0.273mg
Vitamin B6 0.138mg
Vitamin C 5.9mg
Vitamin E 0.66mg
Vitamin K 13.2mcg
Calcium 33mg
Copper 0.045mg
Iron 0.3mg
Magnesium 12mg
Manganese 0.143mg
Phosphorus 35mg
Potassium 320mg
Sodium 69mg

While this list is impressive, that doesn’t mean you should feed carrots to a chinchilla. There are two reasons why:

  1. Chinchillas get all the vitamins and minerals they need from hay and hay pellets. The only mineral they’re likely to be deficient in is calcium, and that’s fixed with cuttle bones, not carrots.
  2. Chinchillas don’t need the same vitamins that we do. Take vitamin C for example: chinchillas produce their own, so don’t need to get it from their food.

This means that there’s no point giving your chinchilla vitamin- and mineral-rich foods, especially if those foods have side effects like carrots would.

Are Carrots Poisonous to Chinchillas?

Carrots aren’t poisonous to chinchillas, but they will cause negative health effects. Even more important than their nutritional inadequacy is that carrots will cause bloating in chinchillas. The problem is that your chinchilla’s gut isn’t set up to deal with vegetable fibers and sugars.

All mammals have gut bacteria in their intestines. These bacteria help to break down food. Certain bacteria are good at breaking down certain foods. Each animal develops its own gut flora from a young age, and if its diet remains unchanged, these bacteria thrive while others aren’t added to the ‘mix’. The body also produces things called ‘enzymes’, which again specialize in breaking down certain foods.

What all of this means is that the chinchilla’s gut is good at breaking down hay and hay pellets, not vegetables. As such, the vegetable matter won’t be fully digested; it will ferment in the gut, and when it does, it will produce lots of gas. Chinchillas have trouble passing gas, so this will build up, and can become life threatening. If there’s enough, it can rupture the stomach or gut lining.

This won’t happen if you feed your chin a tiny amount of carrot. But it can happen after feeding large amounts, or feeding carrot/vegetables consistently.

Can Chinchillas Eat Cooked Carrots?

Cooking food breaks down the nutrients in food to make them more digestible. As such, cooked carrots may not be as bad for your pet as raw carrots. But despite that:

  • They may still have negative health effects
  • They are still nutritionally inadequate
  • Cooking carrots is a lot of effort to go to compared to feeding suitable snacks (which are easy to find, cheap to buy and don’t require preparation)

As such, cooked or otherwise, carrots are a bad choice.

How Much Carrot Can Chinchillas Eat?

Can chinchillas eat carrots?

Chinchillas like eating anything new and interesting, especially sweet things. As such, your chinchilla would eat as much carrot as it could. It’s the same with any snack you give your pet: your chin will stop eating its hay and eat nothing but the snack you provide. For this reason and those outlined above, we would recommend feeding no carrot at all.

If you do insist on feeding your chinchilla carrots or any other vegetable, limit portion sizes so that the negative effects aren’t as serious. A portion the size of your pinky finger shouldn’t be dangerous, although we still don’t recommend feeding any.

How Often Can Chinchillas Eat Carrots?

Again, we would recommend no carrots, so the ideal frequency would be ‘never’. If you are going to feed your pet carrots anyway, at least limit the frequency with which you feed them. If you only feed them once a week, your chinchilla’s digestive tract will fully get rid of the previous carrot meal by the time you feed it another one. That will at least mean that the food doesn’t accumulate and make even more gas.

Should Chinchillas Eat Carrots?

To summarize, chinchillas shouldn’t eat carrots. They aren’t good for chinchillas in any way: they have too much water and not enough fat, protein and carbohydrate, they will cause dangerous gas and bloating, and could even cause diarrhea. There are many snacks that won’t cause these effects and are nutritionally suitable such as rose hips, herbs, and sweet hays. We recommend feeding these snacks instead.


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New owner, don't know where to start? Or do you need a handy chinchilla reference guide? Check out our Chinchilla Care 101 eBook, or get what you need from our online store!