Hamster Central - View Single Post - Advice Needed! Bad Mother hamster, what do I do?

Pebbles82 · 10-03-2020, 04:04 PM

As the others say you need to leave the Mother alone completely. Don’t clean anything or move anything in the cage. Just put food and water out add a handful of nesting material (torn up strips of toilet paper) and scoop out the dead pup. Do that when she’s asleep and quietly. Don’t even go close to the cage to peek. If she is looking after them she should keep taking lots of nesting material and food. You need to put extra food out as well and some veggies. So don’t take her out of the cage either.

If she is out on her own a lot and you don’t hear squeaks for a while then she may have culled the rest. But there may be no trace of them.

If there is only one dead pup in the cage the others may still be in the nest and she culled that one because she sensed there was something wrong with it.

It is their instinct to kill the babies if the nest or cage is disturbed because they’re prey animals. And think an invader could steal or hurt the babies so rather than have them suffer they kill them. Just hard wiring - for all they know it could be a hawk invading the cage or other predator.

It also explains why hamsters are generally a bit territorial about their cages.

10-03-2020, 04:04 PM
Pebbles82 Hamster Antics Join Date: Sep 2014 Posts: 23,533	Re: Advice Needed! Bad Mother hamster, what do I do? As the others say you need to leave the Mother alone completely. Don’t clean anything or move anything in the cage. Just put food and water out add a handful of nesting material (torn up strips of toilet paper) and scoop out the dead pup. Do that when she’s asleep and quietly. Don’t even go close to the cage to peek. If she is looking after them she should keep taking lots of nesting material and food. You need to put extra food out as well and some veggies. So don’t take her out of the cage either. If she is out on her own a lot and you don’t hear squeaks for a while then she may have culled the rest. But there may be no trace of them. If there is only one dead pup in the cage the others may still be in the nest and she culled that one because she sensed there was something wrong with it. It is their instinct to kill the babies if the nest or cage is disturbed because they’re prey animals. And think an invader could steal or hurt the babies so rather than have them suffer they kill them. Just hard wiring - for all they know it could be a hawk invading the cage or other predator. It also explains why hamsters are generally a bit territorial about their cages.