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Old 01-11-2016, 03:30 AM  
Pebbles82
Hamster Antics
 
Join Date: Sep 2014
Posts: 23,533
Default Re: Hamster freaks out in light?

Our hamster is the same - sleeps for England lol. Rarely gets up before we have gone to bed voluntarily. I got him into the feeding time wake-up routine. That is, you put their food out/change water a little bit noisily at a certain time of the evening - whether it's 5pm, 6pm, 7pm or 8pm. Try and find a time that fits around your schedule well and try and keep to that time. A bit of bar clanging while doing it should wake her up.

This wakes ours up enough to come out of his house if I have a tube over his house doorway with food in! Something tasty enough to smell - a bit of banana or cucumber or cheese eg. I put one end of the tube over his door and the treat in the other end, and when he walks into the tube, lift the tube out (put your hands over either end so he can't jump out). I lift ours onto the sofa then, because he is quite tame and the sofa isn't far from his cage. But even then I have a big fleece blanket I put along the edge sort of piled up, as a bit of a barrier, plus it's something he can go under if he wants to.

I've found it interesting that his activity levels are different depending on the time I get him out. Anything before 8pm and he is quite active and isn't out for long for that reason as keeps trying to run! Between 8pm and 10pm he is very docile and just curls up and goes to sleep on you, if he can find a nice spot (eg between us on the sofa, which is like high walls! or under the blanket which I guess feels dark and safe).

I started doing it not just because we have a little boy who wants to see his Hamster (it was a tip in the RSPCA book) but because someone more expert on here once suggested you should handle them every day or they start to lose their tameness. I do find that. If I don't get him out for 2 or 3 days, he is less amenable to it!

In the middle of the night they come into their own and are active and wide awake a lot of the time. If I opened Charlie's cage door after midnight he would be off! And wanting to explore (hardwired to forage at this time I think). But if you come down in the night they can also 'freeze' and pretend they're not active!

I would go with the waking routine at a set time each night. Our time varies a little but not by too much - the routine bit seems important. If she's not tame enough to have on the sofa, that's the time you could take her to the bathtub for a bit of playtime and handling. If you have a hamster ball it's a good way of transporting them safely. I used to put the far end of the tube in the hamster ball before Charlie was tame, so he'd walk into the tube and out the other end into his ball. I'd let him have a run for 5 minutes or so then take him up to the bathtub, put the ball in the dry bathtub and open it up so he could walk out, and have the tube and a couple of other tpys in there.

Interestingly he wasn't bothered about light while he was in the bathtub. But generally I also just have low lighting and lamps. Nothing too bright (he hates our angle poise reading lamp!)

I recently did a short video on how we got Charlie tame in the bathtub - it's a bit basic but gives an idea of how to do slow progress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjyEme2xcq4
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