Heating a hamster cage

[Billy]

Hi everyone,

Does anyone have any experience of heating their hamster's cages - either via a heat pad or light (designed for a vivarium)?

I'm moving in with my boyfriend soon and his house can get really chilly! I'm worried it'll be too cold for a ham. I don't have a hamster at the moment - I lost my little Syrian to wet tail recently - but would like to get one in the future.

Thanks,
Kirstin

[Pebbles82]

I've found the best thing is to have a little oil filled radiator on low all night Heat pads and lights can be a bit risky I think - both in terms of electrical issues overnight and they can get too hot for a hamster as well if not placed right. The main thing is having the room temperature even - the bonus to that is you have a nice warm room in the morning at breakfast time! There are some microwave snugglesafe pads people have used and they do give some warmth near a cage for a while but if the room is freezing cold they wouldn't help much really.

[cypher]

You do need to keep the room your ham is in as warm as you can, oil filled radiators can be a fairly economical way of doing that if you get a good one, insulating the cage underneath to retain heat really helps too, I put a nice thick fleece blanket under my hams cages & the heat pads also work well in the same way under the cage but not touching it especially to keep the nest area nice & cosy.
There have been a lot of threads about keeping hams warm in winter so if you do a forum search you should find lots of other ideas.

[Pebbles82]

I have also added a couple of things to make Charlie's house cosier Zooplus sell quite large hemp mats - they're supposed to be a kind of hospital substrate for sick hamsters. I cut a piece to fit the roof of Charlie's house so it's another layer of insulation - it can also cushion falls if it's on top of a house or shelf. It is supposed to be safe to chew but I'm not sure I'd want to use it with a real chewer of a hamster.

[Fluffagrams]

In addition to the ideas that have already been suggested, here's a thread we had recently about hamsters and the cold that might be worth a read through: Frosty nights and hammies