My friend has a female Syrian hamster, about 7 or 8 months old, and she has a major chewing problem.
She has a pretty big cage (my friend has upgraded her cage 3 times so far), her current cage is 115 x 60 x 58 cm. 3 levels with a lot of floor space, a big running wheel, lots of bedding, a few climbing toys, plus some containers and stuff to hide and play in. Her food is almost always hidden inside her cage or else my friend gives it to her inside a puzzle so she has to work to get it out (like a inside a toilet paper tube with holes in the sides and the food wrapped in lots of bedding material). The hamster gets taken out to socialise daily, and my friend also hamster proofs her front room and bedroom to let the hamster run around at least twice a week, for 15-30 mins a time.
I've never had a hamster before and neither has my friend but to me she seems extremely intelligent and energetic, which is bad in a way because it means it's so hard to keep her happy. I remember when she was new, she would run on the wheel all day, this slowly changed to bar biting and bar chewing (she always chews at a particular corner of her cage). My friend used to get up every 3 mins to wrap cardboard around the bars so that she had something to chew on without hurting her teeth. We got her a couple of chews and stuff and she did chew through them very fast (like a day or 2), and she spends an insane amount of time chewing so I don't think she's chewing just to run down her teeth.
Initially she was in a cage with steel bars but the chewing became constant so my friend upgraded her to a larger wooden cage with a plastic wall (this is the current cage:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PawHut-Ha...e/382624858719 ). However this didn't solve the problem and she again continues to chew the cage to the point where the wood is so chewed down she will soon have chewed a hole in the wood to escape.
Things we're gunna try to do:
1. get a lot of Lego so that we can make her hamster-sized mazes and puzzles quickly so that she has some new mental stimulation everyday.
2. Keep upgrading her cage so that she has a LOT of space (we're gonna connect up her current cage to her old cage via a tube system, and then connect THAT to a glass aquarium cage, AND she'll have some open space of her own like a little backyard that she can run into which will be fenced off obv but it will be able to give her a feeling of openness and hopefully make her feel like she has her own territory.
3. get her more toys
4. bringing her cage over to my house for a few hours so that she has a new environment to explore on her own (would this be upsetting for her?)
BUT basically we don't know what else to do. My friend is really upset, she's wondering if it's really cruel to keep a hamster as a pet full stop (ngl i kinna think it is, even tho were doing our best to give this hamster a gd life she still spends at least 50% of her time gnawing at some wood/bars, so obviously there's still a lack of mental stimulation).
My main question is this- is the hamster unhappy? Maybe the chewing is just an addictive behaviour she learned from a young age? What else can we do to make her even more mentally stimulated and happy?
As for how the hamster seems, she does seem happy when she's out of the cage. She's calm and sociable, doesn't really sit still but not frantic at all when being handled. She is constantly exploring, if she hasn't been out of her cage for a while to explore on her own she does get frantic but if she has been exploring for at least 30 mins a week, more like 2 hours a week usually (my friend tries to let her out on her own everyday for 15-30 mins but the absolute minimum is 30 mins a week) then she is much much calmer, so getting out and exploring definitely has a positive effect. She never bites. She does seem very interested in the perimeter of things, such as corners and walls, which makes me think she's constantly trying to escape. But exploring the perimeter of your territory might just be a natural response. When she was just new she used to run on the wheel for hours at a time, so she's always been extremely energetic. But now she barely runs on the wheel for a long time, she seems more interested in climbing and (mostly) chewing. I also think she went thru some depressive episodes where she kept sleeping for long periods of time, like she would stay inside her den for 18 hours straight sometimes, but maybe that's normal?
Anyway soz 4 rambling but basically IDK what else we can do except add more space and stimulation. Is the hamster happy?