Baby chipmunks

When a female chipmunk has her heat day, it is very recommended to reserve earplugs for that, because the head of the fellow-man is then easily in a blow-up point. The high-pitched, frequent and strong voice of a heated female resembles mainly fire alarm and it will continue the whole day. Occasionally there is more muffled periods and when the female start to eat something the voice can even stop for a while, but ONLY FOR A WHILE, then the voice will start to become stronger again. The shouting will be continued from the early morning until the midnight. If the female doesn't become pregnant on the first heat day, there will be an other heat day after 10 days. At least in our case our girls' other heat days were exactly after 10 days and they last one day, even though I have heard that sometimes chipmunk's heat has continued continuously 2-3 days.

If a chipmunk female has fallen to a winter rest during the past winter, the first heat day will be often delayed a little bit compared to other chipmunk females. You can notice the approaching heat day when male chipmunks start to make advances to the female and try to copulate with her. In general female's genitals also swell up a little and turn red a few days before the heat day. If you don't want chipmunk descendants at all, you have to put male chipmunks in an other cage for the female's heat period. Otherwise you can keep both females and males in a same cage if they only get along well.

Chipmunks reach their sexual maturity in 8-12 months and after that they can have descendants once or twice a year (usually in spring time or early summer time). [Normally it goes like this, but there can be found also exceptions, because Milla's and Muusa's mother had even three litters in a same year.]

Chipmunk's gestation period takes about one month. After that the mother chipmunk will get 1-13 descendants. The delivery day is approaching when female's stomach and teats began to swell up.

Baby chipmunks' eyes start to open when they are about one month old. After that they start little by little crawl outside from their nest to examine the bigger world.

Baby chipmunks are ready to move to their new loving homes in the ages of 7-9 months and when they don't need their mother's milk any more.

If there are some chipmunks in sale, they cost in general 50-120 euros whether they are babies or not. In pet shops you will pay usually double price to get one and besides pet shop's chipmunks are hardly ever hand tames (compared to home breeders). Moreover, In Southern Finland chipmunks are usually a little bit more expensive than in Northern Finland. For example I bought Kasper from Southern Finland and he was more expensive than the girls although the girls (Milla and Muusa) were hand-tamed and babies while Kasper was adult chipmunk and not hand-tamed. However, if you are going to buy chipmunks it's very hard to begin compare prices and chipmunks, because there are so seldom available chipmunks in pet shops or in breeders home. You have to be prepared also for bringing a chipmunk from farther away. What I have read chipmunk advertisements from Keltainen Pörssi, the demand has exceeded nearly always the supply.