View Single Post
Old 08-17-2019, 09:16 PM  
AmityvilleHams
PM Fluffy for custom title
 
Join Date: Mar 2016
Posts: 4,545
Default Re: Roborovskis - One Hamster or Two?

The ones in pet shops are very young, and likely to not have experienced puberty yet which can be a big factor in hamster fights when they're housed in pairs or groups.

Unfortunately, when you have a single hamster you simply cannot and should not ever introduce another hamster. It is far too risky and can end horribly, same with housing hamsters in pairs or groups, and at the absolute worst you can have two dead hamsters instead of one who is perfectly fine as they are now!

Hamsters don't really benefit from social housing unlike some other small pets, and there are numerous risks involved that make it quite harmful in the long run. Things like chronic stress even without fighting mean that you could have a hamster who is always ill or even prone to serious illness. It's also very unnatural as hamsters in the wild would at best be in mixed sex pairs for reproductive purposes(not social purposes).

For the absolute safest and most natural care, stick to single hamsters regardless of species. This also lets you safely utilize things like levels and houses that have single entrances, whereas in pair or group housing levels and such would be completely unsafe as they can cause fighting despite how much more enrichment things like that could offer to a hamster. You'd avoid chronic stress, expensive vet bills, serious injury, and even potentially losing one or more hamster(s) due to deadly fights!

If you want truly social pets that benefit from being housed together, female mice(not males as males cannot be housed together since they almost always fight)are a great idea. Gerbils also tend to be a wonderful choice for social housing in the overwhelming majority of cases, and another example of a pet that would be suitable for social housing(in fact, it's mandatory to house them socially) are rats.
AmityvilleHams is offline   Reply With Quote