My Story

Big Daddy’s Chinchillas is a small hobby breeder located 30 miles south of Atlanta, Georgia in Locust Grove. Three years ago, I purchased my first chinchilla, a standard male that my son named Shomo. After a few months, I decided that he needed a friend, so along came Gardell, another standard male. A couple of months after that, I decided that I wanted a white chinchilla, so I searched the internet until I found him. A week later, I drove to Tennessee to get my new chin. When I saw him, he was in a cage with his brother, a beautiful mosaic chinchilla. You guessed right……I left Tennessee with both of them…..Tebow and Ashe. Then the unexpected happened……Gardell had babies!!!!!!! Whoops!!! Gardell then became Molly since he was a she!!!! New born chinchillas are so cute!!! They are born with their full coat of fur. Within minutes of being born, they are on the run playing and driving mama crazy. That is when I knew that I wanted to start breeding chinchillas. I surfed the internet reading as much as I could find about chinchillas and chinchilla breeding. I soon discovered that most of the information is either opinionated, contradicts what you have already heard or just plain incorrect. I then started searching for a breeder who could help me get started. That’s when I met the owner of CalRae Chins, Louise Meadows. Louise answered my questions no matter how dumb they were. Thanks to her, I was now ready to become a chinchilla breeder. I bought more male chins and several female chins from Louise and off I went. A few months later baby chins were being born at my home……standards, mosaics, whites, ebonies, beiges, black velvets….they were all so adorable, but then I realized something…… you can’t keep all of them!!!!!! Thus, Big Daddy’s Chinchillas was born from necessity. When you take home a Big Daddy chinchilla, you take home a part of our family and you become a part of the Big Daddy family yourself. Chinchillas have only been domesticated as pets since 1923 when adventurer M.F. Chapman was exploring South America and discovered them in the Andes Mountains. Compared to dogs, cats, rabbits, etc., the chinchilla is relatively new to the pet world. Therefore, much of the information on the internet is untrustworthy. Since, I want you to be completely happy with your new pet and I want your chinchilla to be going to a new home that he/she will be happy at for years to come, please ask all the questions you can think of. In the past few years, I have talked with and gathered information from many reliable sources. If I can’t answer your question, I know someone who can and will. The only stupid question is the one that doesn’t get asked!! Chinchillas are not for everyone, therefore many chinchillas wind up in rescues or dying because the owner didn’t get enough good information to make a responsible decision. Remember, the 18-year old kid working at the pet store probably got all of his “knowledge” about chinchillas from a three-fold brochure that he received on his first day on the job. My goal is to make sure that when you purchase a chinchilla from Big Daddy, you will be 100% happy, comfortable and knowledgeable about your new pet. I want you to be proud to tell people, “I got my chinchilla from Big Daddy’s chinchillas and you should too!!!!”