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Old 05-22-2016, 10:02 AM  
Pebbles82
Hamster Antics
 
Join Date: Sep 2014
Posts: 23,533
Default Re: Best house for Syrian

Hello and welcome. Sometimes they find a house too small to build a nest in, or like somewhere darker to nest. You could try making a shoe box house - an upturned shoe box with a hole cut in for a door. That would be nice and dark inside and big enough to build a nest in. It's best if a house is open to the substrate underneath (ie open at the bottom and sitting on the substrate) because then they can bury hoards under their nest and have midnight snacks in bed

If you don't have a shoebox, just a similar sized cardboard box, but check there are no staples or tape.

I you wanted to buy another house that's a bit more glamorous, this one is quite a good house for a Syrian - it's way too small for a guinea pig. It has a flat roof which can double up as a platform and the roof lifts off so you can check inside without your hammie's nest falling apart. The door is quite large so putting a bendy bridge tunnel over the door would make it dark inside and also give a ramp up to the roof - you could put a food bowl on the roof eg.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ferplast-Gu...inea+pig+house

Rodipet make really good hamster houses, but the postage is about £7 on top of the cost of the house - you can use google translate to copy and paste the info

They have "rooms" so it's darker away from the doorway. This one is good (approx £15)

https://www.rodipet.de/shop/haeuser/...us-dalani.html

And this 3 room one is as well (about £20) - when they have more rooms they sometimes move their toilet corner into one of the rooms and you can put a litter tray in there - which helps keep the cage dry and you just lift one of the roofs off to empty the litter tray. They aren't cheap though. The granite square on top helps keep their nails short apparently, and it's a cool place to sit when they get hot. It's the same idea as having a bendy bridge over a single room house though really

https://www.rodipet.de/shop/haeuser/...monoporta.html

In the wild they live in burrows - so I tend to find if there's a tunnel entrance, our hammy goes straight in there and builds a nest. You can also set the houses down in the substrate a bit so they are part subterranean with just a bit of the doorway showing (or a bendy bridge over the door and a bit of substrate scooped out down to the entrance) and it's like a dark underground place so they head for that too.

Last edited by Pebbles82; 05-22-2016 at 10:15 AM.
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