Water bottle obsession

[Nicolapompicola]

One of my sryians, sam, has become competely obsessed with chewing his water bottle spout. It's gotten to the point now that he's not doing anything else really, exept chew this spout. Obviously, i can't do anything to make the spout taste nasty, cause then he wouldn't drink, but, it's so bad that i've had to add another water bottle to the cage, because he can empty one in a matter of hours. his litter feels wet, and it really takes something to make megazorb feel wet!! He currently also has a water bowl too.

any ideas what i can do?

Oh, he also has lots of things in his cage to keep him interested, and an 8" comfort wheel..

he's also quite cage territoral, and will attack anything new that's put into his cage.

[souffle]

Can you arrange the bottle so that only the end pokes through so he cannot get a grip on the spout to chew? You could also try having the bottle a lot lower or higher so he could still drink but chewing would be uncomfortable. A sippy bottle may work as they have a different way of working or perhaps a top hung bottle. If all else fails I would remove the bottles and only use a bowl for a couple of weeks then put one bottle back but only during daytime when he is likely too sleepy to chew. You may gradually be able to return the bottle.

[Nicolapompicola]

I'm thinking about getting him a different bottle, as he HATES having a water bowl. I think some of the problem may be that he's not getting enough water out of the bottle when he licks the end, as he does drink from the bottle whilst he's chewing it..

I don't know if this will affect anything, but, he was brought up in a critter trail cage ( :evil: ), and spent the first year of his life there, as he came to me as a rescue. So, with the water bottle in thr critter trail not having a ball in it, i wondered if that would affect him..

[Holly]

I'm afraid I have two obsessive water bottle chewers. Mocha is a 14 month old Syrian who's virtually given up bar chewing and taken up bottle chewing instead. He can drain a bottle in a couple of hours and consequently soaks the bedding in his potty. I've tried everything from moving the bottle, trying a different one etc and finally decided enough was a enough a while back. He now has the bottle during the day and when he wakes up so he can get a drink if he wants and then I take it out soon after and give him a big heavy non-tip bowl.

I don't think he likes the bottle but I also don't think it's good for him to drink/pee as much as he does when I leave the bottle in.

Unfortunately Milly, from our own litter seems to be developing it as well (as well as bar chewing - aarrgghh) although she does it less when I raise her bottle up really high (she's in an Imac).

[Spuds Mum]

We have a couple that do this - as well as soaking the litter and emptying the bottle, I feel that they should have a bib as they sport a sopping wet front continuously. One of them wore her teeth down unevenly as well (as she always chewed the bottle from one side)
We found the only answer was a heavy bowl. After a couple of weeks we tried to reintroduce te bottle but she greeted it like an old friend and emptied it in about 10 minutes.
so back to the bowl it was!

I think trying a different (more awkward) placing of the bottle may help though - if you have a cage where this is possible. The other thing we tried as we had a high topped cage was hanging the bottle inside from the roof so it just 'swings' in this way she could drink from it, but it wasnt sturdy enough to chew. Might be worth a try - but ours just emptied the bottle trying to bite it!

[poohbearhamsty]

I cant ever see my hamsters ever having a water bottle obsession.... i never see them drinking from the bottle so i put down a little drinking bowl and they sip from that ...but its so annoying because there is always water spilt in the cage and on the sawdust making me have to put new sawdust in often :cry: i tryed putting in a bottle that has a ball at the end when they press it, water comes out but... this bottle broke easily thanks to my brother.. :!:

[Nicolapompicola]

Hamsters usually workout fairly quickly how to get water out of a bottle. I've always used the Classic water bottles, and i've never had any trouble with them.. Well, until Sam decided to chew his!

[poohbearhamsty]

Thanks for replying ill start them using a different bottle from now on and hope they use it ............. :D

[Bailey-Benji]

I have a syrian in a ZooZone who liked to empty the water bottles. She'd go through 3 or 4 a night. It would drive me MAD. Not only would she soak her bedding, she'd soak herself and she even pouched the water a couple of times. I was worried she would make herself ill.

I rearranged her cage, completely differently, and she actually drank from the water bottle and ignored it otherwise. God knows what goes through their little minds! It was great waking up to a dry cage and a dry hamster (and going to sleep was quieter :P) This worked for a couple of weeks before she started again, so I rearranged the cage differently again.

It works for a while and when she starts chewing again, I rearrange the cage as differently as I can. She's not too bad nowadays, although I still get the occasional empty bottle.

[newtohamsters]

When I got Tabitha she had a bald patch on her nose and was clearly a bar chewer so I got her a plastic cage with a wire lid and she did the bottle thing, trouble is for ages it covered up her over grown teeth, she was wet fairly often and that hid her drooling, it wasn't until I moved her to wire cage (i worried loads about her having no water) and she was still a bit wet that I realised something was wrong, even then I thought she was bottle chewing still. poor girl.

NTH