Chinchilla

Chinchillas are small rodents with very soft and valuable fur. If slain, they can be butchered for chinchilla meat and chinchilla fur.

Taming

Chinchillas can be tamed from a tropical rainforest or tropical swamp and farmed for their valuable, insulating, and beautiful furs.

Summary

Chinchillas are pen animals. Once tamed, pen animals cannot and do not need to be trained any further. But if left outside of a pen or caravan hitching spot, pen animals will eventually roam outside your colony. Making a caravan is not required to tie animals to a caravan hitching spot.

Analysis

Chinchillas are most notable for their fur. While they are small and rare animals, chinchillas breed rapidly, and can produce a surprising amount of meat and leather. Should you get a breeding pair, they can make profitable pen animals.

Chinchilla's main competitor are guinea pigs, which produce a similarly valuable hide. Guinea pigs aren't pen animals, so they require constant taming upkeep. However, guinea pigs can nuzzle colonists and can be used as fodder in combat.

Manhunters

By far, the cutest manhunter event - until you realize how difficult small animals are to shoot. On the plus side, it would make for an amazing story to tell your friends if your colony got torn apart from a pack of cute chinchillas

Slaughtering

When slaughtered, a chinchilla yields 18 meat and 8 leather as a baby; 28 meat and 15 as a juvenile; or 49 meat and 21 leather as an adult. Meat is worth 0.05 nutrition.

Adult chinchillas consume 0.2 nutrition per day, and a female chinchilla creates an average 0.47 offspring per day.

Meat

When offspring are slaughtered as babies, a female chinchilla produces 0.28 nutrition of meat per day, for 139.1% nutrition efficiency.
When offspring are slaughtered as adults, offspring consume 0.49 more nutrition for an average of 0.48 more nutrition per day. This results in 0.76 nutrition of meat per day, for 110% nutrition efficiency.

When considering a 1:1 ratio of males:females, nutrition falls to 69.6% (baby) or 85.3% (adult). But when considering a 1:3 ratio of males:females, nutrition rises back to 104.3% (baby) or 100.3% (adult).

Leather

Baby slaughter: 2.47 fur per day, or 12.365 fur per nutrition.
Adult slaughter: 6.49 fur per day, or 9.431 fur per 1 unit nutrition.

When considering a 1:1 ratio of males:females, fur lowers to 6.183 per 1 unit nutrition (baby), or 7.308 per 1 unit nutrition (adult). Like with meat, a higher ratio of females increases efficiency.

Interestingly, the choice of whether to slaughter chinchillas as babies or adults varies as the proportion of females to males changes, with adult slaughter becoming more optimal as the proportion of males increases. This can be thought of as being due to the nutrition consumption of the males overpowering the benefit of not having to feed the offspring. Baby slaughter becomes preferable as the ratio of females:males rises above 2.4:1 for meat optimisation, or 2:1 for leather optimisation.

Trade

Chinchilla fur is highly valuable, beautiful, and cold resistant. Of these uses, beauty is unlikely to make a meaningful impact. Chinchilla fur isn't great for protection, other than cold insulation. As chinchillas are found in tropical biomes, cold insulation is unlikely to be relevant. Thus, the main value of their fur, is money.

With a 1:1 ratio of males:females, chinchillas produce 7.308 fur per 1 unit nutrition. 1 unit of nutrition is equal to 20 hay, which can be grown in 14.4 tiles of haygrass crop. The same tiles of psychoid plant could create 6.9 psychoid leaves per day.

Psychoid leaves are worth 24.2 silver when turned into flake. With 1:1 female/male slaughter, the chinchilla fur would be worth 47.5 silver unprocessed.

Efficiency can increase for a number of reasons:

When you have more females than males, chinchillas are more efficient per unit nutrition. You can support 5:1 ratio of females:males easily.
Chinchillas can graze, which saves the work of having to sow crops in the first place.
Fur can be turned into dusters or formal vests for even more value.

Note that chinchilla fur is then penalized by the butcherer's Butchery Efficiency (dependent on Cooking skill) and the butchering penalty from difficulty.

Training

This animal can be trained as follows:

Guard:
Attack:
Rescue:
Haul:

*As of version 1.1.2610, all animals can be tamed. The percentage of likelihood of success depends on factors such as the Animals Wildness Percentage, Pawn Handling Skill, and others. More information can be found on the animals page.

Health

Body part	Health
Head	10
Skull	10
Brain	4
Nose	4
Neck	10
Jaw	8
Eye ^[1] (left, right)	4
Ear (left, right)	4
Body	16
Kidney^[2] (left, right)	6
Lung^[2] (left, right)	6
Liver^[2]	8
Heart^[2]	6
Spine^[2]	10
Stomach^[2]	8
Limbs (left, right, fore, hind)	12
Appendage (left, right, fore, hind)	8