So my local animal shelter got 7 hamsters in (parents and their babies) but since their a cat and dog shelter only, they needed foster homes. They said they provide EVERYTHING so i thought I'd try fostering (my first ever hamster by the way!) I looked up some quick things about them (Didn't really find anything i didn't know already, guess years of rodent research does that to you
) and picked a hamster up on Saturday (one of the babies, i think they said he's about 2 months-ish) The stuff they gave me was less than ideal... He was in a ridiculously small cage that i wouldn't allow any living thing to live in besides.... no absolutely nothing. It also had a "soft plastic" wheel with bars. Though the worst thing was the shavings... they were pine.
I ended up taking him anyway thinking i could just replace that with my own money. When i got home i found some weird black beetle in the bag of the shavings, I didn't really linger on it 'A single bug got in the bag, so what?' But the universe loves to prove me naive and about 2 days later i found one of these beetles in the hamsters cage. I quickly checked the pine bag again and found it was air dried, meaning fungus, bugs etc were all attracted to the wet wood while it was drying. The bag got chucked outside and the pine was replaced with some aspen i got.
Sorry about that long story
Now to the current problem... the next day after that he was scratching, cleaning and biting his back a lot (it looked like biting, might have been more cleaning) and his fur almost looked greasy. But again I didn't linger on it too much. The day after his fur was dramatically more greasy (though still not too bad) but i was hoping he was just getting in his long fur from his father and that was making it appear "clumpy". But now today there's no mistaking that there's something wrong. He appears to have lost some fur on his back where he was itching, or its just pushed aside. Either way i can still see his skin, which looks redder than normal, his ears also seem redder. His fur also got suddenly VERY greasy appearing over night.
Does anyone know whats wrong with the poor hamster? I almost became a foster failure till this happened D= Did he get mites or some other bug from the horrid pine they gave him? Is his fur just really greasy and making him itch? (trying to get him to use a sand bath but he's still unsure) Or did he have an allergy to the pine that has yet to go away... or is it the aspen he's allergic to?
Almost forgot! His behavior is fine. He eats (i see him eat, so i know he's not just hoarding and leaving it) drinks and is still active. I also put some veggie oil on the wheel the day before this all happened if that has anything to do with it.
It's 8:30 now, I gotta go see him. He already expects me to come, its so cute <3