The Musser Chinchilla Ranch History

     Shiela has a total of 14 years experience raising chinchillas. Shiela graduated from Deleware Valley College(DVC) of science and agriculture with a BS degree in Animal Husbandry.  During her studies, Shiela minored in small animal science. Kevin also graduated from DVC with a BS degree in Dairy Husbandry We are members of MCBA, or the Mutation Chinchilla Breeders Association.
       The Mussers originally got started in the chinchilla business by an uncle who was previously raising small rodents, and was taking care of a moderate chinchilla herd for an elderly woman from whom he was renting his building. The situation for the elderly woman steadily decreased until it became obvious that she could no longer take care of the chinchilla herd. The elderly woman’s family knew nothing of chinchillas and decided that they should sell them to my uncle who had graciously been taking care of them free of charge. Being heavily burdened with his own herd of small rodents, he decided that it would be best for him to sell the chinchillas, which is where we came in.
          Not long after, we had a 100 animal chinchilla ranch stored in our nearby barn where we took care of them for several years. Eventually we had to move from Belleville, Pennsylvania to Fort Loramie, Ohio. Once settled in, we rented a semi trailer where we stored all of our animals and cages until we could find an appropriate building to call home. After nearly a year of looking for a good building to store our chinchillas, we finally ended up in an old hog barn just out of town. At first we had to spend a lot of time cleaning it up, removing old insulation, and adding new siding, but  when the job was done, we had a shrine for our chinchillas to thrive in. In fact they did so well that we decided to expand a considerable amount. We went from a moderate herd of 100 to a large herd of 350 breeding females. That brings us up to our current operation, where we have resided for about 9 years now.


Tyler
(This is our 16 year old white male)