Hamster gets scared into his tube

georgeaw2409 · 11-22-2017, 04:22 PM

Hello everyone,

So, i've had three hamsters in the past and have just bought my fourth a month or so ago. On Saturday i changed his cage because the one before was shoddy and really poor so I took it back. It was a standard plastic tub with a white platform at one end that contained a food bowl and a water bottle. I replaced it with a cage that had a tube going out and around one side and back in again with the tube on one side leading to a platform. Since I got it his behaviour has changed, i expected this as it's all a new surrounding but i'm keen to try and work out quite quickly how to help him because there is something he is doing that makes me feel for him. Beforehand he'd just sleep under the white plastic platform and create a burrow. Now he sleeps right next to the tube on the platform, which wasn't great because he'd wake up constantly, which i assumed was the noise / vibration of the platform. I put a house there instead took the roof off and took out the platform out and now he sleeps in the house, but, if you walk into the room or you do anything nearby he jumps up and straight up and hides in the tube. I don't quite know how often he is doing it if there's any noises in the apartment for example - he uses the tube a lot and puts food in there so I don't want to take it away but I don't know what to do to avoid him jumping so easily. He never did it before. in fact when he'd sleep under the platform in the previous cage he'd never stir at all. He didn't even go underneath the platform of this new cage. Any ideas?

CMB · 11-23-2017, 02:03 AM

Tubes on the outside of a cage aren’t a good idea. They could come apart and your hamster could escape.

Hamsters will often store food, sleep and pee in the tubes to. If you can remove the tubes and block the holes where the tube goes in, it would be better.

cypher · 11-23-2017, 08:11 AM

As CMB said the tubes can be a real problem & if it's possible to remove them & cap off the holes then that is the best thing.
He sounds a bit unsettled by the change which is understandable & he may settle down again soon.
Does he have a house in the base of the cage? Ideally they need a fairly large house with no base on top of a nice deep layer of substrate with some shredded plain white toilet tissue to make a nice nest.