Gather your ingredients!We had some Critical Care that was about to expire, so we used it to make some chinchilla cookies. You can easily substitute Critical Care for finely ground pellets. Nothing special, your normal pellets will do but you need a semi-fine powder.
These are throw together cookies, SO there's no exact measurements. This picture however gives you a rough idea. The majority should be Critical care ( or powdered pellets ) We also added Old Fashion Rolled oats ( helps bind, can be whole or you can grind it to a powder ), Some Calendula petals for flavor, Some Nettle, Some Chopped Oat Straw to help bind ( you can use the dusty bit that is normally found in the bottom of your hay bag in place of this, OR take your hay and blend it up well. The finer, the cleaner the cookie. Oh and we also used some Linden leaf. You can choose whatever you want to add to it. Crushed rose hips? Crushed rose petals? Hibiscus? Your choice!
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You'll also need water. Pictured is water we used from another D.I.Y we have. When you boil wood, the water takes on some tastes and aromas from the wood, I make herbal wood, so I collected some water from my boiling pot ( about 1.5 cups ) to use in my cookies. In the water there was hibiscus, rose petals, and bee pollen... so this adds to my cookies. You can easily just use fresh plain water too.
Slowly add the water to your dry ingredients until a soft moist dough forms. About 1/2 a cup at a time. You may need more or less water depending on how much you make. You don't want it to be sticky... if it's sticky it will need more pellets/critical care. You should be able to form it, without it coating your hands.
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This part is optional. I chose to place my dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper and roll it out to about 1/4" thickness. You can easily roll the dough up into little balls, then flatten on a sheet to make round cookies, but I wanted to make shapes! There's nothing extra special to making shapes, nothing added, you just need to be patient.
You can also use a pizza cutter to make straight cuts, and cut square bite size pieces.
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To make shapes: Choose your cookie cutter, and firmly press into the dough. Remove the dough around the cookie shapes, and use a spatula to gently lift the shapes and place them on a baking tray. Be careful not to ruin your hard work! Larger chunks of hay, pellets, or herbs can make this difficult.
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Once your shapes are cut out, or cookies are formed, or whatever you chose to do... Preheat your oven to about 200* - 250* and place them inside. Check your cookies every 30 minutes, and flip them each time. This helps them dry easily.
If you don't dry them, they will not hold up, and can even mold. SO make sure to put pressure on the center. If it's cold, or squishes, that means they're not dry. They should be hard when dry. Half way through you can move them onto a rack and continue to bake, this lets the heat circulate better and dry them faster.
We let these bake for about a hour and a half. I wonder if a dehydrator would work?
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When done, Allow to dry then take an obligatory picture and share it with us on our Facebook page!
Let your Chinchilla Sample the goods, and tell us how it worked out, or if you have a suggestion to make it even better! Oh, and we suggest only giving a cookie about 2 times a week, and no other treats. These things are obviously LOADED. Store in a paper bag for air flow :)
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