Introducing a new chinchilla to an existing pet chinchilla can present some difficulties, and how smoothly it goes depends largely on the chinchillas themselves. Remember that your resident chinchilla may see their cage and play area as their territory. Generally a younger chinchilla is more likely to accept a friend, as is one who has previously shared a cage.
Obviously the easiest way to get two chinchillas sharing one cage is to keep siblings together as they have been together from birth. But remember that if you have two siblings it is really not a good idea to allow them to breed, so ensure that they are either two boys, two girls, or a neutered boy plus a girl.
If you are bringing a strange chinchilla into your home then you will need to keep it in a separate cage initially. This will give you time to check that the new chinchilla is healthy and will not pass any infection to your resident chinchilla.
When they are playing together ok outside the cage the next step is to introduce one to the others cage:
Introducing same sex chinchillas is possible and many people have done this successfully, methods for same sex introductions are similar to those specified above however the introduction itself may take longer.
When I brought Lexie home and introduced her to Chico neither showed any aggression to each other while they were in separate cages. When I let them out together they sniffed noses, started to groom each other a little and looked really sweet.
Then it all went wrong! They wandered away from each other and a little later wandered back, Lexie then took exception to Chico. She chased him mercilessly, the poor boy lost lumps of fur, and she was spraying him too. Considering her behaviour Chico was very good, he's a sweet boy, he simply ran away from her, but after she kept doing this at each introduction he started having a go back. I thought they would never be friends.
Because Chico started to head in the other direction whenever he saw Lexie out of the cage, I took to holding Lexie while Chico took a look at her. This kept him safe, and at the same time allowed Lexie to see that Chico was not going to harm her - I felt that this might be of help if Lexie was working on the basis that attack is the best form of defence.
Another tactic I believe helped was that I got a small container and put some small treats in it. Then I let them out and called them to get the treats. As they approached I manoeuvred the treat bowl so that it remained dead centre between them, and they were forced to meet nose to nose over the bowl. Given the choice of fisticuffs or treats, the treats won. After so much fur flying it was really good to see them sat near each other peacefully nibbling a treat. In all it took 6 or 7 weeks before they were living in the same cage, but now they are getting on just fine.
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