IN MY PERSONAL OPINION AND EXPERIENCE, AND THAT OF MANY TOP BREEDERS, AVOID feeding Charlie Chinchilla and other foods that look like rabbit mix.  Generally they do not contain sufficient protein, contain far too many treat items and are not hard wearing enough to prevent future teeth problems, as the chins tend to not eat the hard pellets or the chopped up hay that they contain.  Chins tend to pick out the bits they like and then scatter the rest, wasting much of the food.  So the nutritional balance they claim is lost - almost like a child being offered a three course dinner all in one go and leaving all the vegetables but eating the sweet.

Dietary problems take a long time to show up in a chinchilla - but can be almost impossible to reverse even with long term feeding of a correct balanced diet.

US brands of pellets seem to exceed 20% protein, whereas most UK brands are approx 12-15%.  “Dangerous" levels of protein which cause damage appear to be around 28%. Vitamin A is fat-soluble vitamin. Too much can cause liver-damage.12,000iu per kilo of food is recommended by some animal dieticians but there is no hard and fast evidence to support this debate. Vitamin A degrades quickly in storage (six months storage at room temperature resulted in a 53% loss – Source: NRC, 1983) - so always check use by dates to ensure the full vitamin balance of the pellets remains.

Vitamin A oxidises putting strain on the chins body as it tries to remove it from its system. Research has linked it to "yellow-fat disease", a metabolic disorder associated with feeding too high a level of Vitamin A.  Storing in a cool environment decreases the amount of oxidisation that occurs.
In a poll conducted on Chinchillas Unlimited during August 2003, the most used pellet appeared to be Duggins, though personally I have found these to be very crumbly and producing a lot of waste for myself.

Below I have placed an analysis of some of the more common brands of pellet. (Data believed to be correct Sept 2003 - if you find anything has changed please let me know so that I can update this page or add your own preferred makes analysis)

 

Producer	Charnwood	Duggins	Harrisons	Pets At Home Bagged pellets
Protein	20%	17.3%	18%	17.-%
Oil	4%	3.5%	3%	4.8%
Fibre	12%	12.5%	10.5%	14.5%
Ash	8%	9.6%	9%	7.0%
Vit A	10000iu/kg	14.000 units	1000 iu/kg	15000 iu/kg
Vit B3	D3 2000iu/kg	2.400 units	1000 iu/kg	2000 iu/kg
Vit E alpha-tocopherol	15iu/kg	80 units	25 iu/kg	50 iu/kg
Copper (cupric sulphate)	30mg/kg		25 mg/kg	25 mg/kg)
Others	Lysine  1% DE Horse 11.9 mj/Kg
Ingredients	Wheatfeed, soya meal, oatfeed, sunflower pellets, breakfast cereal meal, oats, maize gluten, oilseeds, molasses, minerals and vitamin supplement, peanut meal, methionine	Grassmeal, oatfeed, hi pro soya, wheatfeed, molasses, full fat soya, duggins supplement, linseed, vitamins and minerals	wheatfeed, dried grass, extracted soyabean, wheat, molasses, barley, oatfeed, calcium carbonate, calcined magnesite, salt, dicalcium phosphate, minerals, vitamins.	Wheatfeed, oat feed, Sunflower, Grass, Peas, Soya, Barley, Vegetable Fat, Minerals, Binder E565, Vitamins
Contact:	Charnwood Milling Company Ltd, Saxstead Road, Framlingham, Suffolk IP13 9PT      www.charnwood-milling.co.uk	Manufactured by: Dicksons (Hanley) Ltd, Myatt Street, Far Green, Hanley, Stoke on Trent, Staffs.		The pre-packed ones can go stale sitting upon the shelf (always check dates) so try to go for the loose pellets as there is very little waste as they generally have a high turnover.

Ridgeway Food also produces a pellet - which we do not at present have the ingredients for. The company asked us to remove the old ingredients listing that we had as they felt being placed last on the list implied some form of negativity about their product. This was not the case - however the threats they sent us to get the item removed I would say are a good enough reason for us to steer clear of their products in the future!

The information provided in the above table was correct the the best of our knowledge at the time of publication:

Message to Chinchilla pellet producers - if any of the information above has changed since this was published, please let us know