Hamster Central - View Single Post - Help! First time hamster owner, she is sick!

Pebbles82 · 01-09-2019, 02:29 AM

Hello and welcome. So sorry to hear Bingo is not well. How old is she and how long have you had her? As Cypher said, they can get dental problems and a dental abscess can affect the eye. That tends to be with older hamsters. Did the vet check her front teeth? The bottom ones continually grow and need to be kept shortened by chewing hard things which is why it's good for them to have a chew stick on the go and a hard hamster mix to eat. But even then, when they get older the bottom teeth can get too long and can even puncture the palate, leading to an infection - although I am sure your vet would have noticed this.

Apart from that, when they're older they can get tooth decay, like humans, in the back teeth and toothache, and this can lead to them eating less hard food and then their bottom teeth get too long. So they can need a tooth trim at the vets if this happens.

Or it may just be an eye infection. Hopefully the antibiotics will sort it. But when she yawns it would be worth having a look to see how long her bottom teeth are. They are supposed to be quite long, but you would be able to tell if they are too long - and then they can't close their mouths properly.

01-09-2019, 02:29 AM
Pebbles82 Hamster Antics Join Date: Sep 2014 Posts: 23,533	Re: Help! First time hamster owner, she is sick! Hello and welcome. So sorry to hear Bingo is not well. How old is she and how long have you had her? As Cypher said, they can get dental problems and a dental abscess can affect the eye. That tends to be with older hamsters. Did the vet check her front teeth? The bottom ones continually grow and need to be kept shortened by chewing hard things which is why it's good for them to have a chew stick on the go and a hard hamster mix to eat. But even then, when they get older the bottom teeth can get too long and can even puncture the palate, leading to an infection - although I am sure your vet would have noticed this. Apart from that, when they're older they can get tooth decay, like humans, in the back teeth and toothache, and this can lead to them eating less hard food and then their bottom teeth get too long. So they can need a tooth trim at the vets if this happens. Or it may just be an eye infection. Hopefully the antibiotics will sort it. But when she yawns it would be worth having a look to see how long her bottom teeth are. They are supposed to be quite long, but you would be able to tell if they are too long - and then they can't close their mouths properly.