minky's babies 1999

Minky, our agouti female chipmunk gave birth to an unknown number of babies on 23rd April 1999.

Chipmunk babies stay in the mother's birthing nest until they are about 30 days old, and do not usually emerge prior to that time. If the babies are disturbed before their natural emergence, there is a risk that the mother chipmunk will abandon them (this risk is greater the younger the babies are).

On 23rd May Minky's little chipmunk children began to emerge ! We had been waiting eagerly for this moment to come, as we had been able to hear the babies in their nestbox since birth, and had done extremely well to avoid the temptation of looking at them too early.

We were rewarded with seeing at least two little babies pop their heads out from their paper nest, and one baby ventured forward curiously to peer at the humans - it did not appear to be frightened, and stared at us for a good few seconds. We then retreated so as not to scare the tiny creature, who had been very brave to stay and look at two humans - we must have appeared gigantic to the baby chipmunk.

Left: The bravest little baby chipmunk can just be seen in the centre of the picture - it has a pale border around it's eyelids.

This picture was taken with a simple digital camera - I did not use a conventional camera because the shutter sound would have frightened the poor creature, and the bright flash would have damaged the baby's recently-opened eyes, which are still very sensitive to light. The babies' eyes woul have opened about a week ago.

We don't know exactly how many babies there are at present - this page will be updated as soon as the babies emerge further.

Unfortunately, Minky was found dead on the morning of 24th May 1999. She had got herself stuck inside a plastic bag and suffocated. Luckily her babies had started to take solid food, and didn't need their mother's milk anymore. Hopefully the orphaned babies would survive, but just to make sure, I telephoned a Vet who advised me to give the baby chipmunks a probiotic additive for their drinking water. This would ensure that the chipmunks had enough build-up of digestive enzymes and bacteria to deal with their food.

I caught all the baby chipmunks and transferred them to a nestbox in a vacant cage, so that I could keep an eye on them and ensure that they were eating and drinking.

The six baby chipmunks are all very tame, curious and cautiously adventurous. However, they have not got the co-ordination or confidence to run or leap yet, and have not tried to do so. There are three mals babies and three female.

Cute as they are, we couldn't keep all the baby chipmunks, as there would not be room to house them properly to stop them inbreeding when they became adults. So we started to advertise the babies in the second week of July 1999, when the babies were old enough and confident enough to be rehomed. One man took home a pair of males, after doing extensive research on chipmunks prior to finally deciding to have some as pets. The other male went to an elderly lady who had kept chipmunks before.

Later we discovered that one of the remaining females was in fact a male whose genital papillae were unusually close together.

Unfortunately, the two remaining children of Minky had a severe fight. During the fight, one chipmunk was fatally injured, and had to be euthanised at the Vet. The remaining female was kept, still un-named, in the hope that she would be found a new home.