[AprilPearl]

Hi, I am going through the same thing with my hamster and thought I’d share what has helped me.

My hamster (Quigley) will be 2 years and 6 months old tomorrow. He used to be about 205g but over the past few months ago he has stopped eating his mix and dropped to 165g.

We found that he will still happily eat softer foods such as baby food and someone on here recommended crushing up his food and mixing it with water. This worked a treat! Quigley has Harry Hamster food and I have been crushing up a tablespoon of this with a pestle and mortar every day and mixing it with water. He has been enthusiastically eating this so that usually almost all of it gets eaten.

The Harry Hamster takes a bit of effort to crush up. You do need a pestle and mortar and you do have to remove the sweet corn, sunflower seeds, peanuts and pumpkin seeds before you start crushing as those won’t crush. I just give Quigley the seeds and peanuts whole as treats separately since he is still eating these (or at least he’s taking them).

I tried giving Quigley some of the science selective pellets crushed up with water. They are perfectly fine for Syrians. As for the portion sizes, I’d say that a tablespoon is right for a Syrian which is probably about 10g. I think people usually say to give a hamster a tablespoon of food every day regardless of what species they are or what food it is - dwarfs will just eat less of it.

Quigley didn’t like the selective science pellets much and left most of them even after I crushed them up and mixed them with water so I went back to the crushed up Harry Hamster which he eats almost all of.

I still give Quigley a tablespoon of uncrushed Harry Hamster every day in addition to the crushed up stuff and he is still mostly ignoring this but he does take some of it occasionally.

So, crushing up food and mixing with water to get a porridge like consistency is very useful. But if your hammie is anything like mine you may have better luck getting them to eat crushed up Harry Hamster.

You may also want to try giving your hamster some porridge oats mixed with water, some babyfood, some egg - soft foods like those.

Have you had your hamster’s teeth checked by a vet to see if they are overgrown? That can be a cause of them not eating. It wasn’t the problem in my hamster’s case though, so age is also a factor.

I’d also recommend weighing your hamster once a week if you don’t already - that way you can keep track of how she is doing. Since I have been getting more food into Quigley I can see that he’s managed to largely maintain his weight although unfortunately he has lost a little bit more recently so I need to keep an eye on that.

You’ll also want to make sure that your hamster’s teeth don’t end up over growing as a result of having softer foods. Make sure she has things to chew on such as whimzees and give her any hard foods which she will still eat such as peanuts, Brazil nuts, maybe even the occasional banana chip. Also don’t stop offering her uncrushed hamster food every day in addition to the mushed up stuff just in case she wants to take it.

ETA: has your hamster stopped eating her mix? If she has, then that’s probably why she’s losing weight and the above measures may help. But if she’s still eating her mix but is losing weight regardless there are probably deeper issues which simply crushing up her food isn’t going to help with.