Stressed Hamster?

[OliverS]

Hi all, just wanted a bit of advice on how to determine a stressed hamster and how to help them. I have two Russian dwarves (getting along fine, that’s not what’s causing any stress) and I’ve just fully cleaned their cage. I only generally spot clean different areas of the cage at different times to not freak them out as much but decided that the cage was due a full clean. One of them is quite outgoing and friendly but the other is still a bit nervous which is why I spot clean, she has ‘her corner’ in the cage where she is most of the time but she ventured up onto one of the shelves while I had 5 minutes so I took my opportunity so get the top of the cage in the playpen, wake the friendly one up, put her in the playpen and clean the bottom of the cage.

I’ve kept it the same as much as I could (she has a lot of dry food stored in her corner so I’ve put some fresh stuff there (fresh dry food not stuff that will go off) and I kept a few handfuls of clean wood shavings and bedding to sprinkle over the top so they recognise the smell etc.

Anyway, long story short, she’s back in the cage and she’s going ballistic running about and stuff, she’s even in the playpen (I have a bridge that works well as a ladder so they can come and go as they please), she hasn’t been in the playpen for months and I put it out for a couple of hours in the late evening at least 4 times a week. Is any of this a sign of stress? It may just be energy but it’s currently 15:45 and she doesn’t usually have her run on her wheel or go nuts around the cage until about 23:00 usually. My other baby is loving life with having an early playtime, I don’t know whether shadow will be alright when shady is back in from playtime, we’ll have to see.


Tl;dr - hamster cage cleaned, hamster going nuts, want to find out if it’s stress.


Update (well, kind of, but I don’t fancy going back and changing my whole message) - she’s currently gone to bed upstairs, she might have tired herself out, although she isn’t in there much so she must just want a place where she recognised the smell properly.

Update 2 - the nuts hamster has gone to bed downstairs which I’m seeing as a positive but the hamster who likes the play pen has now started putting bedding in her pouches and moving it to a spot outside to build a nest so it looks like she’s moving out so she could be the stressed one now, Christ, if I never clean their cage out again, it’ll be too soon