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

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