Toileting behaviour

[Kyrkogrimr]

Ok, so this might be a bit of a weird one

This isn't a problem or a confusion, just a point of curiosity. As far as I was aware, Syrians could be toilet trained and dwarf hamsters just sort of... go wherever they want. Cadmium definitely backed this up as nothing I tried would coax her into not peeing in her nest, whereas Hydrogen pretty much instantly took to using a designated toilet except when he was stropping and protest-peeing.

When I first brought Carbon home I wasn't surprised that initially he seemed to pee in his nest quite a lot and I was having to spot clean that area every day, and honestly, his cage was getting just a little bit whiffy. I'm aware that over cleaning can make rodents scent mark more, so I just maintained the spot cleaning and tried to leave him otherwise alone so he could settle in (huge new cage full of new smells might take a while to settle into).

But in the last few days, maybe the past week-ish he seems to pee mostly in one or other of his sand baths, (though he won't accept a corner toilet inside the house and digs all of the sand out and puts his hoard there instead ) and while I have checked around his nest, he doesn't seem to be peeing there anymore and his whole cage smells less as long as I spot clean the sand areas - there's still a bit of a musky smell (I mentioned this when I was asking about male vs female dwarf hamsters) but that isn't as strong and it's definitely not a dirty smell, it's just... his smell, I guess.

So basically, the point of this ramble was: is it unusual for dwarves to use a designated toilet spot like that, or was Cadmium just chronically lazy? :P Have your hamsters changed their habits (other than for a medical reason)? Does your hamster have a strong opinion about where a toilet should and should not be?

[Thin Lizzy]

All hamsters have different toilet habits, some can be easily trained. I know that with mine they would pee on the wheel, sometimes pee in their house. What I would do was I'd pick up some of their substrate that they'd peed on and then put in a corner and over time they would use that area. I don't clean the toilet area everyday, I remove the used substrate and put some fresh in to replace it and every 2nd or 3rd day I'd use lukewarm water to clean the area.

[TinyBubbles]

My dwarf favors one place for sure!

(Let me preface this by saying I apologized to my hammy everyday for a month!)

I have admitted that I made all the rookie mistakes, and my first was that we started with a habitrail. It had this "lookout" that was kind of a separate space and that is where he chose to toilet. When we correct our mistake (the following week) we connected his original habitrail to his new home and I put what I what they advertised as a toilet in the same spot the lookout used to be so he continued to go there.

It is truly awesome as we can just give that a good hot water wash every 3 days and we have almost no smell at all. So while I can't claim that he is toilet trained, he certainly let us know that he had made a decision about where he was going to go.

[Petite]

Originally Posted by TinyBubbles

we connected his original habitrail to his new home

Please, what is a habitrail?

I haven't tried a hamster toilet yet with Freya. Her predecessor had a specific "wet corner", but when I put a toilet in the same place with some soiled substrate in it as per recommendations, she simply moved her wet corner. I've had Freya for several months now, and I've no idea where she pees, which makes spot cleaning impossible.

[TinyBubbles]

Habitrail is what we call those cages that are too small for anything other than transportation. They connect to each other with tubes.

[Merlina]

My 10 week syrian Skarloey pees in his wheel. He is totally obsessed with it and spends all night in there. I have spent ages feeling and sniffing through all his bedding and can't find any wet patches so I think he must get in the wheel the minute he wakes up and can't spare the time for a toilet break! I have to wash the wheel out every morning but his cage stays nice and clean. All previous hamsters have used corner toilets with sand and pretty much trained themselves. Hopefully Skarloey will change his ways when he grows up a bit!

[Kyrkogrimr]

If anything, I'd say Carbon is getting more consistent about using the sand baths for his toilets and not going anywhere else. I check regularly, but I haven't had to spot clean anything else for a while now. *Shrug* I get that all hamsters are different, but I was under the impression that dwarves tend not to use toilets as well as syrians (if at all) but Carbon is tidier than Hydrogen ever was! No complaints here; it's nice to know exactly where to look for spot cleaning and not to have to worry about him sleeping in a soggy nest! lol I loved Cadmium, but I wouldn't be upset if future dwarves were more like Carbon than Cadmium in this specific regard - certainly makes cleaning easier :P