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.Baby hamsters

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!