Hamster Baby Advice, please!

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 6/6/06 at 9:53pm

The dwarf baby hamsters are two weeks old. Do they need a cage away from their mother? (The father is dead, long story.)

They still nurse, will they know how to drink from the water tube?

[Up In Lost]

Posted: 6/6/06 at 9:57pm

Aw! KNow nothign about Hamsters, only that they're cutet!

[SallyBrown]

Posted: 6/6/06 at 9:57pm

Mine did eventually. If you put them right next to the tube and sort of push them to it, they start to understand. Mine did but it took a couple of days to get used to it.

[colleen_lee]

Posted: 6/6/06 at 10:01pm

You'll want to wait until they're about 3 weeks of age and then sex them. The females can stay with their mom, but you'll want to get the boys into a new cage. They won't reach sexual maturity until about 8 weeks, but sometimes the males can start to get aggressive and competitive as young as 4 or 5 weeks.

They will learn how to drink from the bottle by watching their mother, just be sure it's low enough (or there is a step underneath it) so they can reach it.

You can and should start handling them at this age though.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 6/6/06 at 10:04pm

Colleen, thanks! Now, how do we determine thier sex? (I have seen my wife give birth three times, no jokes please) I have heard that it is difficult to determine the sex.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 6/6/06 at 10:07pm

Undi, the mother is a nasty little bitch, she bites anyone who gets close!!! I will try!

[colleen_lee]

Posted: 6/6/06 at 10:08pm

Undi has it right. There are also pictures/diagrams all over the internet if you need more comparisons. Just google dwarf hamster breeding or dwarf hamster sexing.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 6/6/06 at 10:09pm

I really appreciate the advice. These little things are so cute!!!!! Where is AbbaRabbit tonight?

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 6/6/06 at 10:12pm

It is a funny saga, documented on Moji 5!

When I googled earlier, I read that pellets are preferred over the seed food?

[colleen_lee]

Posted: 6/6/06 at 10:15pm

Generally yes because each seed has it's individual nutritional content while the pellets are all fortified. Hamsters will often pick out and eat just their favorite seeds sometimes leaving them with a nutritional imbalance. Since the pellets are fortified, they're going to get the same nutritional value no matter which pellet they choose to eat.

But, I've rarely seen it be an issue. A lot of people feed exclusively seed diets and have no problems. I personally switched to pellets with my gerbils because they were loading up on just the sunflower seeds and getting really, really fat.

Updated On: 6/6/06 at 10:15 PM

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 6/6/06 at 10:28pm

Undi, so CUTE!!! I will try to take pictures!

[Elphaba]

Posted: 6/7/06 at 12:09am

eww, I never learned to appreciate hampsters.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 6/7/06 at 12:14am

E, you never had kids! We do stupid things to make our kids happy

[Rose_MacShane]

Posted: 6/7/06 at 1:50am

Funny story about dwarf hamsters: My mom and I were at a pet store fawning over the little widgets and my mom reached down to pet one, which promptly whipped around and bit her. Hard. It latched onto her finger. She shook it off and it landed in its cage, perfectly fine but with her blood all over its face!
Around the house, they're called "evil hamsters" or "vampire hamsters" now.

[Jon]

Posted: 6/7/06 at 12:44pm

All I know about hamsters is that if they can dance, they can be internet stars!

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 6/7/06 at 12:53pm

brdlwyr...I know little about hamster care, but your due diligence regarding your kid's, lets face it, disposable pet made me smile.

Great dad!

[AbbaRabbit]

Posted: 6/8/06 at 3:50pm

https://www.hamsterific.com/RaisingPups.html

https://www.petsyclopedia.com/hamsters/baby.xml

now you've made me want one! my mom will NOT be please!

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 6/8/06 at 3:56pm

Thanks Abba!

[AbbaRabbit]

Posted: 6/8/06 at 3:58pm

no prob... most of the advice i have for baby animals is what to do if the mother wont care for them, so as long as she's still feeding them, she's doing a good job.