our new baby is an oddball, but is she okay?

[pompomsdaddy]

Hi everyone!

New here, hope this is the right subforum me and my wife got our second hamster at the weekend (in a different cage and room to our first due to our original little guy being a roborovski and the new girl being a Syrian) and we absolutely adore her. she's so sweet and such a little character, but we just want to make sure the following is okay and somewhat normal?

Firstly, she absolutely can open her eyes, and spends plenty of the night walking around wide eyed and active, and it's great. However at points during the day she is in quite a strange half asleep state, where she comes out for food, a stretch, maybe a little run, but does it all with her eyes closed! It's super cute and if she's fine with it then great, but we just want to make sure that's okay. Sometimes she can be in this state for a full hour or two, kind of half sleeping but also every few minutes coming out for a bite of food, then going back to sleep, all while her eyes are shut. I should also hasten to add the room is dark at this point, she has plenty of space to burrow in, and we are totally silent while in the room with her. It's just interesting to watch

Secondly, while as I mentioned above, she has plenty of sawdust and bedding to burrow in, as well as some lovely hidey-holes, beds, blocks, logs etc, she almost always chooses to sleep in the plastic tubing that connects her bottom floor to her top floor. Again, we have seen her burrow plenty, and she has slept in her beds, she actually seems surprisingly content and happy in there considering it's still fairly new surroundings for her (we got her 10 days ago), but it seems odd that she's choosing to sleep on hard plastic, not really surrounded by anything other than more hard plastic. Again, she is using the other stuff, but this seems to be her chosen spot 90% of the time, just want to make sure this is okay too.

We just absolutely adore little pom-pom, and want to make sure she's happy, healthy and safe, are both points above okay as long as she *can* open her eyes and *does* sleep in other places?

Thanks very much

[Shadow Cat]

They're funny little creatures with many quirks. I wouldn't worry too much. But if she's a baby now be very careful that as she grows she doesn't get too big for the tubing and risk getting stuck. My Syrian female is a proper chunkster (she's not fat, just big), they can get quite large, especially compared to a robo!

[pompomsdaddy]

Originally Posted by Shadow Cat

They're funny little creatures with many quirks. I wouldn't worry too much. But if she's a baby now be very careful that as she grows she doesn't get too big for the tubing and risk getting stuck. My Syrian female is a proper chunkster (she's not fat, just big), they can get quite large, especially compared to a robo!

hey, thanks so much for this! she's actually fully grown, we adopted her at 5 months, so no risk of that thankfully! Monitoring her over the last couple of days, she is coming out and happily running around the main part of her enclosure, but is dragging bedding back inside the tubing and making a little home for herself each night in one particular bend in the tubing she seems to love. Absolutely adorable, just wanted to make sure it seems okay. Weird thing to do to choose the hard plastic over the 3 actual "beds" we bought her but it's just precious, we love her so much.

Thanks for the help

[Ria P]

Congratulations on your new hamster. She sounds adorable.

Best keep an eye on those tubes because they can lead to health problems if a hamster sleeps and nests in them. They have very little ventilation and condensation can build up. The combination of warmth and moisture is the perfect breeding ground for harmful bacteria. If Pom-pom pees in the tubes you'd need to take them apart frequently to clean them or mould could grow on food she may hoard in there.

I'd encourage her to nest in a nice big house with lots of bedding like Kaytee clean and cozy not the fluffy stuff they can get their paws tangled in. They like a big heap of torn into strips, plain white unscented toilet paper left outside their house so they can build a big nest.
I love watching our Syrians pouch the toilet paper or try to pull it all inside their house at once.

All our dwarfs live in Hamster Heavens and the first thing i do is to take all the tubes and plastic out then start with a nice spacious cage. That's just what i do which doesn't mean it's the right thing to do..
I take it it's the Hamster Heaven Pom-pom lives in? That's the only cage with tubes anywhere near big enough for a Syrian hamster i can think of.