New hamster sleeping in toilet

[Pebbles82]

One other thing - it is winter and gets very cold at night. If he doesn't have a lot of substrate and only has a small house/nest, it's important not to let the room get too cold or they can go into torpor. I have a little oil filled radiator on a timer to come on for an hour or two in the middle of the night. But if it's in a living room that is warm till late at night and isn't a cold draughty house like ours, it may not be necessary.

[Jamieking86]

Originally Posted by Serendipity7000

Wow that was quick All sounds normal - they do poop a lot out of the cage when they're babies and before they're tame - I think it's partly nerves and partly not having got into more grown up habits

Is he in the cage on the photo? I am sure there is a hamster front left corner in the little bowl! I be the has enjoyed exploring.

Yes maybe another go or two. When you move him over people say to move ALL the old bedding across - it really helps. As the new cage is bigger you could leave the bedding in there you have and spread all the old bedding on top of it - pressing it down if it's a bit deep.

The wheel looks good for now - but as Cypher says it can be best to get it set up for the long term- when you start moving things round and changing them in the cage they can get quite stressed and it could set back trust/taming again or make them a bit reclusive.

Adding something new is usually accepted quite well - but taking something out or moving things around really upsets them. I've found they actually get attached to favourite toys! Our hammy loved his little rainbow bridge.
On the other hand you wouldn't need to change much when getting a bigger wheel if you just do the changes at one end - eg remove the green shelf and put the wheel back left corner- then maybe a new house front left corner so it;s not too open - and leave everything else as it is. If you give them a bigger house they usually move in but he'd still like the old house as a hidey place (or food store maybe).

I have some photos somewhere of how to hang a wodent wheel from the top bars. Rodipet still sell the 11" wodent wheel but the postage from Germany is about £8 on top of the wheel cost. The only other place that sells them in the uk is petplanet and they're nearly always out of stock.

When you move him I would try and put things in a similar layout, so his house could maybe do to go under the pink shelf where you have the toilet - same orientation as now. You'll need to wait and see where he chooses as his pee corner - they will only use the litter tray if it's in the corner they choose. But then you can just move the litter tray where he has chosen.

After you move him in he may have the heeby jeebies for a few days and will need leaving alone for 2 or 3 days - although you could talk to him through the bars. If he wants to come out then let him out of course. It could take a good two weeks before he's adjusted to the new cage fully so best not to make any changes in that time.

I am sure he will love the cage.

No their is no hamster in the bowl, I think it's just a reflection. I had only just set the cage up when i took the photo. I will add as much bedding as i can for him, I've already put some wood shavings down (same substrate as his old cage), put some carefresh ultra on top of that which is around 5 inch of substrate, so i'll add as much of his old substrate as poss as i think the recommended is around 6 inch?

I will put his old house in the same corner, i was thinking of doing that anyway, it might be more familiar for him. How can you tell where they pee? Do you feel for damp substrate/bedding and have a good sniff? lol.

Thank you for the tip on the wheel, hanging it upside down sounds like a good idea, would probably allow more room for other toys etc. I'll see how he goes with the pink shelf, theirs a little bowl up their which i put a few treats in, I think he could smell them because he did try get up the slide but the slide up to the pink shelf is quite steep, and he couldn't get up bless him, so he climbed along the back of the cage and got up that way, but if he doesn't bother with it much when we put him in I might take it out and put the wheel somewhere their.

I have a 8 and half inch comfort wheel at the moment, is that ok for him? He's only 8-9 weeks old at the moment so he's still quite small. I know the minimum wheel size is 8 inch as anything less can arch their backs, is 11" recommended or is that just if they get quite big?

He lives in our living room, so the heating is on quite regular, plus with our bodyheat, TV etc it more or less always stays warm in here but will certainly keep an eye out for that. He will have a lot more substrate than his older cage once he's in, so they'll be plenty of room for him to burrow himself anywhere and everywhere.

[Pebbles82]

Ha ha - that's exactly what our hammy did at first - avoid the scary ladder and climb the back bars to the shelf. Once they build a bit of confidence they zoom up and down it.

The little bowl in the corner of the shelf is interesting -hopefully yours won't use it as a toilet like ours did. Because the bowl lifts out I (and Coco had this too) kept finding he had removed it with his teeth to see what was underneath lol- and would then go under the shelf to look up and see what it was like from that end - inquisitive little things

When ours started using it as a toilet I was advised to put his litter tray over the top and give him a separate food bowl nearby. That worked. Except - because of the hump on the shelf,whenever he got in the toilet and then reached for his water bottle he ended up aquaplaning down the shelf in the toilet - which he seemed to quite enjoy so kept doing it and then found the bowl underneath was still there so kept lifting it out again. Endless entertainment haha.

They all have different personalities and yours might be more sensible and pee on the substrate in a corner. Yes usually you can see reasonably quickly where they are peeing by the wet substrate - although sometimes, they are quite clean and put more substrate on top to keep the smelldown and sortof bury it. So it can take a while - but don't worry about it. If you can't smell it, don't worry, that's my motto.

When you do find where it is you can move the litter tray there. Then you can see when it needs emptying - the Chinchilla sand soaks up the pee quite well reducing any odour. If you have potty litter granules just keep an eye out in case he tries to eat them as the granules are very bad for them. Ours tried it once but sensibly spat it out again. I ended up switching to chinchilla bathing sand which is what most people use.

The 8.5" comfort wheel is fine - wait and see how big he grows. For an average syrian an 11" wheel is usually best as they run so much better in one and are guaranteed to have a straight back and run in the right position. If a hammy grows particularly large (not usual with pet shop hamsters and girls often bigger than boys) then they can even need a 12" wheel. Our last syrian grew huge and weighted 225g. The average is between 135g and 180g. Even the 11" wodent wheel wasn't quite big enough for him. The 11" wood wheel was - because it was 29cm instead of 28cm diameter - it just made that bit of difference.

All sounds good with the substrate in the new cage. 6" should fill the base so you might want to compress it down a bit when adding the old on top so it doesn't fall out of the bars too much.

That is so strange - maybe my eyes are playing tricks - it actually looks like a grey small hamster in the stainless steel bowl lol. Seeing hamsters everywhere

[Pebbles82]

Also when moving him over with his house/nest, put a huge pile of torn up strips of toilet paper somewhere in the cage - they like to redo their nest and add more paper to it - or he may decide to make a nest somewhere else altogether. Our hammy went straight for the little pod house on the pink shelf - because it was near the food bowl. I would suggest actually removing that house to avoid him doing that because it needs cleaning out too much being all plastic and small, and they get very upset at having their houses cleaned out. I used the pod house in a pet carrier as it fitted nicely as a spare house - and during playtime also.

Sometimes baby hamsters will pee in their nest as well (they grow out of that) -with a bigger nest you can leave some of the nest behind in that case, but in a small house it would probably all need taking out and that would upset him. Mind you they soon learn not to pee in the nestwhen that happens!

[Jamieking86]

Haha their funny little things aren't they. He seems to love his toilet papaer, we've put loads in their and we wake up in the morning and it's all gone, he's nested it somewhere but can't tell where. I'm guessing in his house, so we just keep putting more and more in.

So we put him in his new cage again last night to have a run around, he seemed to love it again, he was so active, then it came to getting him out to put him back in his old cage but he wouldn't get in the box we use to transport him. We put bedding in and a few treats but i think he knew he was going back to his old cage and just didn't want to get in lol, and we didn't want to pick up him and handle him as he's not used to that yet. So we decided to leave him in his new cage permanently. We put as much substrate from his old cage on top, transferred his house over and the rest of his toys etc so he stayed in his new cage last night. I think he was very active because i was laid in bed and i could hear a slight knocking noise. Baring in mind he's downstairs and we sleep upstairs, it was early hours of the morning so very unlikely it was next door. All i can think is he was constantly running in his wheel. He seems to love his new cage but i understand it may take a while for him to fully settle in to it. Is their anything we should look out for that shows he isn't settling in?

[Pebbles82]

That sounds good. They do make all kinds of funny knocking noises when setting up home - especially inside houses - scratching the walls etc. Best to just leave him alone for 2 or 3 days now to work out where he is nesting and get some habits in the cage. Although obviously if he shows signs of wanting to come out then some bathtub taming wouldn't go amiss - but resist doing anything in the cage while he's out of it or he'll know and won't want to come out again.

So apart from some settling in time the rule of thumb is don't clean anything or change anything in the cage now for at least 2 weeks. That can be quite important for ongoing. They really need to make it their own and feel secure or bar chewing may start and other stress behaviours.

If he uses his toilet then empty that after 5 days maybe and refill it with sand, and it's ok to move the toilet if it turns out to be in the wrong place (ie move it to where he has chosen as a toilet). If he doesn't use the toilet then and it starts to get a bit whiffy after a week then just take a handful of substrate out where he has pee'd and put a clean handful in, and mix it in a bit so it still smells familiar. You can just spot clean mainly long term anyway. I go at least 2 months before doing a substrate change - if they use the toilet the base of the cage stays dry. And even then only replace about half of it and mix the old in with the new.

They are really quite clean little things and wash themselves a lot and will organise things themselves - moving bedding around etc. Don't worry about poops - they aren't dirty or smelly - they're like little hard black seeds and sometimes they eat them or hoard them - which is normal. They have two stomachs and can redigest nutrients from their poops. Sometimes they hoard them for emergency supplies in case there is ever a food shortage.

With young hamsters they tend to poop all over the place at first - some is nerves and some is being too young to develop better habits! But unless they start taking over in a big way then I'd just leave them - especially for the first couple of weeks or he will see you as robbing him of his emergency supplies. They sometimes poop in their food bowl for that reason as well!

Eventually you hardly ever see poops - some will be hoarded and some in the litter tray.

Their dry food hoards can be left for really quite a long time. If they get pee'd on you'd need to remove some but always try and leave some behind and always replace any food you take out with new food in exactly the same place.

Their nest and their hoard are their two most precious things!

What Hamster Mix are you using? Also giving them a small piece of fresh veg each day is advised (and they really love their bit of fresh veg). Initially every 3 days till their digestive systems adjust to it, then every other day, then after a couple of weeks it can be every day. Just a piece about 1cm cube sized (not that shape necessarily!) enough for them to eat but not so big that they hoard it and it goes off. They tend to eat what they want from the dish and leave the rest there.

Broccoli, carrot, cucumber, spinach, baby corn, cucumber - whatever you have in. I tend to rotate between Broccoli, carrot and cucumber as they keep a long time in the fridge although I am accused of spending too much on veg for the hamster and he sometimes gets baby spinach leaves, cauliflower and baby corn

[Pebbles82]

As long as he can reach his water bottle and food ok he should be fine now.

[Jamieking86]

Yes we are going to leave him alone now, obviously we will talk to him, if he comes near the bars i will offer him a treat through the bars, make sure he feels safe and wanted but other than that we're not going to bother him too much for now. We do plan on doing more bath tub time with him, so if he does show signs of wanting to come out we will certainly see if we can spend a bit of time with him.

I didn't know they hoard their poop and save it for emergencies, that's what i love about this site and general research, you learn so much in such a short space of time.

We are using Hamster muesli at the moment, it's the same food he was eating at the pet store, i didn't want to change it as i read it can be a cause of stress changing their food all of a sudden which can be a cause of wet tail, but we have plenty of treats for him, we've given him bits of carrot so far too which he seems to like. I did give him quite a big chunk though, he only ate half of it, so i took the other half out as like you say, i didn't want it going off in somewhere it shouldn't.

Ideally do i give him different veg instead of the same every few days? I don't want him to get board of what he's eating which is why we got a load of treats so we can give him something different each time.

Once again thank for your very helpful information.

Edit: Also he seems to have burrowed and nested in the left corner of his cage and behind the house we put in the same corner as his old cage. I'm guessing the is normal? He's currently in his house now so fortunately he's still using it, but we've noticed most of the time he's burrowed into either corner of the cage. There's more substrate in this cage so there's plenty more for him to dig into.

[cypher]

Great to hear he's taken to the cage so well already! It doesn't sound as though he's going to have any trouble settling in, sometimes if they do you will just notice their behaviour become a little more nervous again or they can be more reluctant to come out but if that happens unless something in the cage is obviously not working for them it's best to just leave them & give them a bit of time.

You're right not to change food suddenly but it might be worth doing a gradual change over to Harry Hamster at some point, it is generally considered a better mix.
With veg give as much variety as possible, as well as being more interesting for them they get a lot more micronutrients that way & are unlikely to get too much of any one thing. Not all veg are safe, there's a list here that might help if you're unsure.
Safe and Unsafe Food and Plants - Hamster Central WIKI

I'm not so sure about the poo! They do tend to poo in the nest & often in the hoard area but mostly they eat it fresh I think! It's to do with the way their digestive system works, very different to ours & they can get more nutrients out of their food by eating it twice basically.

[Pebbles82]

Yes I have often seen them pull a poo out and eat it lol. Our Syrian definitely hoards them

It sounds like he is building a bigger nest - they do like to build big nests to keep warm and cosy and feel safe. But doesn't want to give up the house but can't fit the nest in the house - so he's using both. In a couple of weeks it might be an idea to pop a bigger house over the top of his corner nest and take the little one out (take any nesting material out and leave it with his bigger nest). But not just yet maybe. If there isn't a house big enough they often build a big nest under a shelf. Anywhere that's darker and has protection above.