Hi,
I wondered if I could just stop by to thank people again for their thoughts on this thread, and to say that Roc is now a very happy chap, with a greatly improved enclosure?
After the discussion on this thread, I also chatted to the vet about what to do, and made some changes to Roc's house. It's been a month now and we seem to be really all sorted.
Here are the changes that we made:
The cage is as it was before. Previously during the day there was a long cardboard tube that went down from the cage door, into a children's paddling pool where Roc had his exercise. He slept in the pipe during the day and the paddling pool and tube were put away at night, so that he just had his cage then.
In the new arrangments we have set things up so he has a pipe there all the time, but it is secure so that he can't escape and doesn't need to be put away at night. Here is how it works:
I have replaced the cardboard tube with a proper underground plastic drain pipe, of the sort that would normally be laid under roads. It's about 10cm across and maybe 150cm long. It is extremely rodent-proof.
(like this:
https://www.drainagesuperstore.co.uk...ipe-110mm.html)
At the bottom end of the drain pipe I inserted the pipe through the top of a lockable plastic crate. The crate is about 80cm by 40cm, and about 30cm tall. I put air holes in the top.
At the top end of the pipe, my husband designed a 3D printable part that would allow the drain pipe to fit tightly to the door of the cage, so that the pipe can be in position all the times, with the hamster having free access to his "underground" burrow crate at all times, day and night. There is no possibility of him escaping.
I then draped a piece of blackout lining (curtain material) over the underground crate burrow so it is dark. I cut a couple of holes in the curtain for air circulation.
Inside the crate I put a thick layer of back-2-nature paper litter, and then a big pile of safe bed paper bedding.
As soon as that was set up, Roc the hamster was down there like a rocket. He was very interested in it all. Instead of sleeping in the pipe as he used to, he started sleeping in the crate, and made a complex arrangement of sleeping nest, and several food stores. It was extremely interesting to be able to see a hamster in a fully underground burrow and to see what he did.
That went really well for a few weeks, until I replaced the bedding materials in the crate, which he didn't like. He is now back to sleeping in the pipe, with the bottom stuffed shut with paper bedding material. However, he seems very happy with that, and I notice that in the night he often is happy to potter around in the crate sorting out his domestic arrangements, rather than going above-ground to the cage.
He has also made really extensive food stores in the crate. In three of the four corners of the crate, he has a big pile of nuts and seeds and vegetables and all the nice things that we give him. We can see them clearly through the plastic side of the box if we peek in.
The other thing that I did was to replace his 23cm silent spinner wheel with a 30cm Trixie Hamster wheel. At first it rattled and didn't seem that good, so my husband bought a new metal spindle pole and we fitted it as a new spindle on the wheel. Now the pole comes out on both sides of the wheel and is attached to the cage on both sides, so that the wheel should not flex down and grate against the bars when Roc is on it. We just finished that yesterday so I haven't seen whether it is good yet with Roc on it.
Roc seems very happy indeed with these arrangments. The thing that I notice is that when Roc is awake and in his cage, he never knaws the bars to ask to come out. He just seems to be perfectly happy to be in there, with him on one side the bars and us and the rest of the world on the other side. I think he is a stay-at-home kind of guy.
He does always come to the cage bars to visit us and have a chat, and we post nuts and seeds through the bars to him. That goes completely fine and he takes everything that we offer, and stuffs his pouches completely full, and then rushes down to his underground burrow to put the food in his food stores. He doesn't show aggressive body language any more and shows no signs of wanting to come out. Sometimes when I visit him he is busy and just wanders off to do his own thing. When my son is on his cub scout zoom call, sometimes Roc gets up to come and watch the screen.
I still do not pick Roc up, and have not had any need to. He is happy with that and so am I.
I just wondered if I could come back and explain about all that, in case it helps any other hamsters and owners who come along after us.
Thanks so much for all of the helpful chat on this thread, it really helped me to sort things out.
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