Animal Lovers Web Blog

After our bad experience at trying keeping male rabbits together, it should not really have come as a surprise to find out that our boy baby dwarf hamsters were no longer the best of friends.

At six weeks old, we had finally mastered  sexing dwarf hamsters and all of our baby hamsters had been accurately identified as boy or girl hamsters and separated into two cages.  Out of an initial litter of seven, we found that the boys outnumbered the girls by five to two, but as we expected a couple of the males to be going to a new home shortly, we left them to enjoy each others company for a little while longer.

It became apparent that all was not well over the weekend as increasingly worrying screeches and squeals emanated from the boys cage.  We weren’t sure whether it was initially just over boisterous play (ever the optimist!) but closer observation lead us to single out a rogue hammy who seemed to get his kicks out of terrorising the other boys.  Clearly he preferred his own company and, once presented with a new bin cage of his own, peace was restored to the boys quarters again.

Our confidence that the boy dwarf hamster’s new-found harmony would last through the New Year was unfortunately short lived.  An ear-piercing squeal this evening sent us rushing to find one of the boys blood-soaked with bites to his nose, several puncture wounds on his back and other wounds to his feet and abdomen.  He was a very sorry and ragged mess.  We quickly assembled an old cage and, following some TLC, left him alone to rest and hopefully recover from his ordeal.

We’re not sure if he was the result of an ambush by the other 3 dwarf hamsters,  they all looked remarkably unscathed and the hamster which was attacked had been a late addition to the boys cage due to difficulty sexing him accurately.  We just need to hope that the remaining males continue to get along or we’ll be over-run with cages, never mind hamsters! 

Our dwarf baby hamsters are now three weeks old and we were getting to the stage of needing to think about sexing the hamsters and separating them with their respective parent. Unfortunately, Sunny (dad) has hastened up the whole process by having a sudden personality swap! His nomination for father of the year has been removed after his repeated attempts to attack the babies and scare them half witless. Although no babies appeared to be physically harmed, he made his feelings towards them known with lunging, high pitched squeals and threatening behaviour.

This posed a real problem for us as we had planned to put the male babies in with him but realised that this was now probably an unwise option. Fortunately, we have had some really great advice from some dwarf hamster experts on our new hamster discussion forum . We realised that we had no option but to separate Sunny from the baby hamsters, both male and femal, as the risk that he would have seriously harmed or killed them by the morning would have been too great.

Laura and Diane hastily reassembled an old cage and sadly removed Sunny from the family home. It was with a really heavy heart, as he had been such a supportive and helpful dad up until this point. We didn’t know how he would react to being taken from his partner Elly and all the babies - we were soon to find out!

Sunny became quite frantic once on his own, desperately scratching the sides of his cage and trying to climb out, it was terrible to see him in such distress. We decided that this was too cruel and made a short term decision to reunite him with Elly, but to leave the hamster pups together on their own. Our friends on the forum assured us that, although the babies were still suckling from Elly at times, they would be able to look after themselves. We had certainly seen them using the water bottles and taking solid food, so we felt assured that they would be OK.

Well, Sunny and Elly are back together - Sunny is so delighted and has unfortunately been displaying his great affection as only male hamsters know how. Let’s hope we don’t hear the patter of more tiny paws too soon! Elly is still a young hamster and we don’t really want her to be breeding, but it’s a bit of a problem as they get so distressed when apart. It was suggested to us that we could maybe separate them with a wire partition so that at least they could see and smell each other. We’ll need to think carefully about what’s best for them both.

As for our hamster babies - talk about when the cat’s away! They have had a ball without mum and dad around and have really amused us. Check out the video and you’ll probably agree that they don’t seem to be missing the old folks too much at all!

Diane
www.AnimalLoversWeb.com

The baby dwarf hamsters are getting bigger, faster and cuter every day. They are also growing in number as was evident from our surprise discovery last night. We had thought that there were only five but…

Just before bedtime last night, we checked to make sure that the hamsters were OK, and we couldn’t resist peeking underneath one of the cardboard tubes that they often like to nestle under. It was one of those “double take” moments, when it seemed that there were more bodies than there should have been. Certainly there were at least three fawn coloured babies and at our last count, we had only ever seen two.

Scooping them all up for a closer inspection, we managed to count at least seven babies - we think! Anyway, their cage will be due for cleaning soon, so it’ll be a good excuse for a proper head count. We’ll have to be extra careful sifting through all the wood shavings to make sure that we don’t miss (or crush) any!

Diane
www.AnimalLoversWeb.com

Now at around two week old our hamster babies are finally losing their inhibitions and are out and about quite frequently and are incredibly cute. Once you’ve seen newborn lambs and chicks you think you have seen the cutest things that the animal world has to offer, then it surprises you again with a baby animal at least equally cute.

Hamster babies are tiny and they seem to have a head that is disproportionately large for their bodies, which just adds to their cuteness. When we first started to handle them they would just sit there, frozen to the spot. Now though, they are having a sniff around and even having a little nibble at our fingers.

We have two lovely fawn coloured baby hamsters and three that have exactly the same markings as their mother, which is darker brown with a blackish dorsal stripe. We did count at least eight to begin with but some do seem to have disappeared, without a trace. Unfortunately, one of the babies seems to have a problem with its eye, which doesn’t seem to be opening properly. We are going to ask for some advice regarding this from a hamster expert on our hamster discussion forum. We are still hoping that it is not too late and that the eye may be ok. You can just see this briefly on the videos below.

We are now thinking about having a go at sexing the  hamsters soon as we will need to separate them at about 3 weeks. We are also dreading separating the parents, as they do make a lovely and very considerate couple. From observing the daddy hamster over the last two weeks I think many human dads could learn a thing or two about how to be a good partner and father!

John

www.AnimalLoversWeb.com

We continue to be very impressed with our young Dwarf russian hamsters and their parenting skills. We haven’t captured much footage of the baby hamsters yet, largely as a result of the very protective behaviour of the parents. We did  have a laugh though at the behaviour of the mother hamster recently when we tried to get a look in the nest.

The video below shows the hamster frantically digging in the bedding materials, trying to cover the entrance to the nest, then as if that wasn’t enough, she comes further out to get more material. Almost covering herself in the process.

The baby hamsters did spill out to the area just in front of the nest box last night, but typically, when trying to film animals, as soon as you get the camera…it’s all over. The mother hamster had dragged them right back in, and guess what? Correct, buried them in more bedding materials.

John

www.AnimalLoversWeb.com

Our hamster babies are now almost one week old. Since the night that we first found the little heap of pink bodies quite visibly on display, you would hardly know that we still had them. We have only been lucky enough to catch an occasional glimpse, as captured on the video, and if it wasn’t for the barely audible sqeaking sounds that we hear from time to time, we would not be certain that they are still there at all. The other clue is that we are seeing much less of the parents than before. They seem to want to bury the baby hamsters in the nesting box and guard them all day (and even night!) long, and who can blame them? I must say I am very impressed with such dedicated hamster parenting in these very young animals, who themselves are only about 11 weeks old.

The parents are also, as expected, displaying some uncharacteristic signs of aggression, which they have never done previously. When Diane was changing the water today, one of them (still unnamed, awaiting a vote result due in about a week) sunk their teeth into her finger, which luckily was gloved and hung on for a good few seconds before letting go.

Well, it is only about a week now until we can hopefully have a proper look and its hard to believe that by this time the little pink creatures should have a coat of hair and eyes wide open. They do seem very vulnerable and defenceless compared with many other animals young. We are still not sure how many baby hamsters we have but think it should be about 6 to 8 from what we saw the first night that they were born. This is about the average for a hamster litter and we hope that deep in the nest they have all survived.

John
www.AnimalLoversWeb.com

On the third day now after realising that our hamsters had babies, and having a scare thinking that the parent hamsters had eaten them, we now have concrete proof that they are still alive! Just have a look at the video, as mum or dad hamster demonstrates a little hamster baby manoeuvering skills for camera. The video is a bit blurred, as we can’t get too close at the moment and they like the room quite dark, but it is better than nothing, I’m sure you’ll agree. Aren’t they cute? Not the prettiest things in the world, they look a little like an alien or an unborn embryo still, but I’m sure they’ll improve with age

We just need now to contain our excitement to get a better look at, and play with, the hamster babies and try to restrain ourselves from interfering with them for about two week. Then we should have between six to eight cute new baby hamsters to show you in pictures and video on the web site and blog. So we may be having a few more hamster naming votes! It can seem a rather daunting prospect at first about what to do if your hamsters have babies? But we can’t wait until they open their eyes and we can gently start to handle them.

We do realise that we will have to do a bit of sorting out, separating and finding new homes for most of the hamsters , if we don’t want to be overrun by hamsters by the new year. Much as we like Russian dwarf hamsters we can only handle so many!

John
www.AnimalLoversWeb.com

We are very pleased to report that on checking the hamsters this morning, we could definately see a few pink little bodies wriggling around, deep in one of the hamsters bedding boxes. So our little hamster pups have not been eaten after all, what a relief!

Amazingly, what this means is that our two Russian Dwarf hamsters must have carried all of them from the box they were born in to the box they are in now, which is quite an obstacle course of a journey. I would love to have captured that on film. Unfortunately, we have not been able to get any pics yet, as we are very apprehensive about approaching the cage at the moment. We are very excited about this hamster litter and we don’t want to do anything to compromise their safety. The babies have also been buried quite deeply under the bedding materials, so are very hard to get a view of at the moment.

Like rabbits, if a human scent is detected near the babies, the hamsters will kill them. So we are observing from a distance for now and will get some pics as soon as we can and upload them to our animal website.

John
www.AnimalLoversWeb.com

We bought our two beautiful Russian dwarf hamsters, Sunny and Unnamed (awaiting the outcome of a hamster name vote on our website) in October, when they were only eight weeks old. The pet shop couldn’t guarantee their gender at the time and as they have matured, we have tried to accurately identify whether we had boys or girls. Although, this isn’t theoretically difficult to do, in practice, keeping the hamsters still long enough has made the job more complicated than we thought.

We had convinced ourselves that both hamsters were probably boys and, as they seemed to be getting on so well together, assumed that they were happy in each other’s company. We didn’t realise just how happy they were, until last night when Laura went in to see them. It was tempting to think that she was trying to wind us up when she shouted “the hamsters have had babies”. In disbelief, the rest of the family rushed in to investigate and were shocked and suprised to find somewhere between 6-10 wriggling, scrawny, pink hamster babies inside the hamster’s sleeping quarters!

Clearly our attempts to sex the hamsters were well off the mark and it took a while for this news to sink in. This was an area of animal care we knew very little about - breeding chickens really doesn’t prepare you for caring for hamster babies! A collective rush for advice on the internet and from our hamster books ensued and reassured us that, in the short term, there was very little for us to do, other than leave the hamsters in peace for the night.

We awoke today to another shock, of a different kind. Apparently, no hamsters! On the spot where they all lay last night, there was nothing. We knew from everything that we had read on the subject of hamster babies, that there was a potential risk that the new babies could be eaten by the parents. When we went to check again, and again, on the new arrivals, they were no longer there and the sleeping area was devoid of any evidence that there had ever been any baby hamsters at all. It was a real heart sink.

It was difficult to believe that all the babies had been eaten, and without a trace! We were holding out that maybe the parents had moved them into another area of the cage. The only other place that we couldn’t see into properly ourselves was a long cardboard box that the hamsters would often use as a sleeping area. It seemed a long shot that the parents had taken the babies into this area of the cage, as it would require carrying them, presumably by mouth, along quite a stretch of tubing to the other nesting box. Some of the literature that we had read did say that the parents may move the hamsters, so this hypothesis wasn’t completely beyond the realms of possibility.

All day long we have waited to see if there were any signs of young hamster life, as both hamsters have been asleep inside the elusive box! Finally, this evening, they came out of their box and I managed to shine a torch in. You can imagine my relief and surprise to make out a little pink wriggle!

I’m not sure just how many “pups” are in there and obviously, their future is still quite precarious. Sunny and Unnamed are very young parents and, ideally, we wouldn’t have bred from them at all and certainly not at such a young age. Our poor male hamster is going to have to be removed from the cage because he will mate again ASAP and we don’t want another unplanned pregnancy. Our problem at the moment is identifying who is mum and who is dad!

We can’t disturb their cage or handle them as this could definitely cause the parents to eat the pups. Both hamsters are doing such a lovely job of parenting at the moment it really is difficult to tell just who is the daddy! Hopefully, over the next few days, I’ll be able to catch a glimpse of the pups feeding - problem solved - I hope!

Diane
www.AnimalLoversWeb.com