All food goes to potty :( Help

[larry ben kenobi]

My female Syrian is putting all her food in her potty. Constantly.

She has room for other hoarding areas as she is in a wooden box house with four compartments, the potty being in one of them. One she nests in, and that leaves two additional ones that she just uses as a ... foyer? lol. Occasionally she will keep a whimzee in the other two rooms, but once it is bit down to size, that goes into the potty too.

I switched to a safer sand (ZooMed reptisand) from the dusty Tiny Friends Farm cause I was worried she was ingesting too much of it due to this habit.

Does anyone know how I can get her to hoard anywhere else? There are two additional tunnel style hides in her cage (Detolf) as well as a deep bedding area with 6" substrate.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[souffle]

I don't think you can. Ours do this too and it hasn't harmed them. They do it so their scent covers up the smell of the food so other animals can't smell it so easily! They don't know that you are not after their pee soaked seeds really!
We remove any soggy stuff and just leave the rest. You will likely find they also have another small clean store in the nest as well.

[Pebbles82]

Our hamster has started doing it with "special things". When our last hamster started doing it I managed to change the habit gradually by putting new food next to the potty when I emptied it. For a while. But eventually moved the potty - and then ended up having two potties. One for hoarding one for peeing

The problem is it can become a viscious circle because they will sometimes pee on a hoard if they are scared it may be taken by "something". To deter people from stealing it. You then have to throw it away because it's pee'd on, so they pee on it more! Try emptying the potty and putting a good handful of new food back next to/near the potty and let the hamster see you do it, plus the odd treat in the food you put back. If that doesn't work in the next few weeks, try moving the potty and add a new one without any sand in, where the old one was

With our last syrian, he had a shelf from the hamster heaven with an inset food bowl in the corner. He nested in the little house on the shelf and chose that corner to pee in - so he kept peeing in the foodbowl! After advice on here, I put the potty in that corner on top of the empty bowl and put a new food bowl somewhere else. That did the trick, although he did used to push the potty to one side and lift the little inset bowl out! Maybe just to see what was underneath!

[larry ben kenobi]

Yes -- she does it with special things, too! And I've read about it being a security thing. I've tried to leave some in (like if it is her whimzee or a special treat like a walnut piece) and remove most of it. I will try replacing food near the potty to see if that helps.

[Pebbles82]

If it's as big as a whimzee, maybe just lift it out again and put it next to the potty - she might get the message.