Is this normal?

[Crazy guy 135]

My Hamster has been chewing at the bars of her cage, she is a Syrian. She has over 400 inches of cage space and fresh food and water every day. Can anyone explain why she is doing this? I rescued her from the street and has definitely been domesticated, this is my first ever Hamster and just want advice from someone with more experience. Many thanks!

[Kyrkogrimr]

Unfortunately, Syrians can be more demanding - especially females, from what I hear. I had a male syrian in an almost 800"² cage and he wasn't satisfied. Sometimes they don't agree on how much space is enough.

What sort of enrichment do you have for her? Do you bowl feed or scatter feed?

[cypher]

Can you post a photo of your cage set up? They can be very demanding but there may be some suggestions we could make to help.

[gtyatt5]

I must be equating hamsters to humans too much. I imagine a person behind bars would love to be out free. Give me freedom and liberty, I say! So, I guess I'm not too concerned about a hamster wanting to get out.

In my 6 weeks of experience with our Syrian (who was 6 weeks at the time, so now about 3 months old), she'll gnaw and chew at the wire mesh on the plastic tote covers. We first had about 20 cm of substrate in one tote, but with all the gnawing and chewing, we reduced the substrate somewhat. Why? We can't sleep...the sound is quite annoying. And in this heat, we can't really keep the room door closed or she'd die from heat stroke/suffocation.


But there seems to be reasons for her antics.

1. She's just curious! I mean really curious! We thought she was skittish when we first got her, but it's clearly rapid-fire curiousity. In this state, she'll gnaw and chew once or twice and move on to something else.

2. She's bored and wants extra stimulation. If we do additional scatter-feeds or play find the seeds (paper rolls etc), then she stops and focuses on the food.

3. She wants out! She wants her playtime! When we do the food stuff, sometimes she'll just ignore it and stand on her hind legs and just stare at us. We bring the cup or hamster ball...and she scoops right on in.


Maybe we have beginners' luck? It's probably that, because our new dwarf is a headache...

[Crazy guy 135]

Originally Posted by Kyrkogrimr

Unfortunately, Syrians can be more demanding - especially females, from what I hear. I had a male syrian in an almost 800"² cage and he wasn't satisfied. Sometimes they don't agree on how much space is enough.

What sort of enrichment do you have for her? Do you bowl feed or scatter feed?

We bowl feed her, we'll try to scatter feed though

[Yanathehammie]

I have a female Syrian and she is currently in an 800sq inch cage. She used to chew on the bars when I was in the same room or if she heard noises outside, but not at any other times. To solve this, I found that free roaming her for around an hour every night worked. Although, I am currently building a diy cage which has around 1500sq inches.

To answer the original question, bar chewing is unfortunately very common. It can be caused by many things but providing more things to do and more stimulation is the right step to take