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Old 01-19-2021, 07:07 AM   #1
danishamis
Newborn Pup
 
Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 3
Default New Syrian sleeping all day & most of night

Hi everyone,

Sorry if this post is a bit long, but I'm quite concerned by our new Syrian girl's behavior. I did loads of research beforehand, so I knew she would need a few days (and maybe more) to get used to her new home. It's been a week and we have left her alone almost this entire time, but I am becoming a bit concerned by her behavior...

1. She sleeps the entire day AND most of the night. By this I mean she is sleeping probably about 20+ hours a day. I am always awake very late (often until 4am and I have a night camera at her enclosure so I have been checking to monitor her activity levels constantly.)

2. She is very nervous and skittish, which might explain why she avoids coming out, but the sleeping seems excessive - because even when it is completely dark and quiet at night, she won't come out.

3. On her first night with us, she spent about an hour climbing the barred section of the cage and falling from a height. She is in a large enclosure (105 x 60 x 70) with loads of enrichment (sand, hides, tunnels, wheel, loads of bedding, different textures, plenty of chews, millet sprays etc.) and is 5 weeks old.

The enclosure is plexiglass on the bottom half and bars at the top. She has deep bedding on most of the bottom which meant she could reach up to climb the bar section. I rearranged some things a bit to ensure she would only be falling into soft bedding. I was worried by the falls and the behavior itself, since I keep reading that hamsters "aren't climbers." Yet she was like an acrobat...(until she fell off every time of course).

4. On the fourth day, I tried to offer her a treat from my hand, but she didn't take it. She just tried to hide. On the 5th day, I put a piece of carrot up to the door of the hide she sleeps in and she poked her nose out, took it from me and went back in.

5. She seems to be urinating right outside her hide (that's the only place where I have found damp Carefresh). I'm not sure if that's normal, because with our dwarf and gerbils, they toilet away from their sleeping area.

6. She was most active on the first night (after her hour of bar-climbing she did about 5 hours on her wheel), but it's been less and less activity since then...

For example, she slept the entire day yesterday, came out at 1am for about 2 hours, then went back to sleep at about 3am. It's now 2pm the next day and it seems this brief two hours during the night has been her only activity in a 30+ hour period. It's very confusing, because I assumed when she settled into her activity level would go up, not down...

...

She was hand-reared from an unplanned litter and was seemingly very happy to be held by the girl we got her from, but with us, she doesn't seem to be making any progress at all. (We have put tissues with our smell into her house to get her used to us)

- I know it's a huge change being taken from her original home with her littermates and we're totally willing to go at her pace. I understand it might take her weeks or months to be fully comfortable, but some of this behavior (particularly the almost constant sleeping) is worrying me.

So I just want to know from people more knowledgeable, am I right to be concerned, or is all of this completely normal?

Thank you!

D

Last edited by danishamis; 01-19-2021 at 02:02 PM.
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Old 01-20-2021, 10:56 AM   #2
Ria P
House of Hamsters
 
Join Date: Mar 2019
Location: Wiltshire, UK
Posts: 7,103
Default Re: New Syrian sleeping all day & most of night

Hi and welcome to HC!

Two of my hamsters live mainly underground and i sometimes don't see them for days.

Their fresh food, linseeds and some of their hamster mix disappears and they run on their wheels when i'm asleep so i know that they are alive and well.

It could well be that your hamster needs more time to settle in before she wants to make contact but it could also be that she is a very independent and self contained hamster.

As long as she's eating and drinking i wouldn't worry too much.

Keep in mind that hamsters are not always asleep when we can't see them.

Last edited by Ria P; 01-20-2021 at 01:07 PM.
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Old 01-20-2021, 11:56 AM   #3
danishamis
Newborn Pup
 
Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 3
Default Re: New Syrian sleeping all day & most of night

Thanks for your response! We managed to take her out to her playpen for the first time today and she seemed healthy and not too nervous, so am hoping it's just a case of her needing more time to adjust, which is fine. We didn't try to interact much, just let her sniff our hands and talked to her calmly.

The thing about her oversleeping was just that I could see she wasn't even coming out of the small hide she has chosen, and it seems there's not much she could have been doing in there if she was awake!
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Old 01-20-2021, 01:27 PM   #4
Ria P
House of Hamsters
 
Join Date: Mar 2019
Location: Wiltshire, UK
Posts: 7,103
Default Re: New Syrian sleeping all day & most of night

Just had another thought. Does your hamster have a big bottomless house?
Syrians usually like a large house to build a big nest in and keep a hoard near or under their nest. I use guinea pig size Ferplast houses and leave a big heap of torn into strips plain white toilet paper outside their house for nesting material.
It may encourage her to get busy.
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Old 01-20-2021, 05:44 PM   #5
danishamis
Newborn Pup
 
Join Date: Jan 2021
Posts: 3
Default Re: New Syrian sleeping all day & most of night

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ria P View Post
Just had another thought. Does your hamster have a big bottomless house?
Syrians usually like a large house to build a big nest in and keep a hoard near or under their nest. I use guinea pig size Ferplast houses and leave a big heap of torn into strips plain white toilet paper outside their house for nesting material.
It may encourage her to get busy.
She does have a bottomless one, but she's chosen the most enclosed one to spend all her time in! (it's a ceramic mushroom)

The bottomless one she has isn't very big, so I'm going to try to make a multi-chamber one out of a shoebox tomorrow and see if that helps.
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