Hamster Central - View Single Post - Hello am new here and would like some cage advice

AmityvilleHams · 08-10-2019, 08:16 AM

The best thing to completely guarantee you'll never have arguments or even death is to just separate the two hamsters now. Any species of hamster is not truly naturally social including the dwarf species(in the wild they'd be together in mixed sex pairings for breeding purposes but not social purposes).

60 cm x 30 cm is very small however and so are mini dunas. For each hamster, you'd want to aim for 80 x 50 cm to 100 x 50 cm per cage and they should be in one cage each. We've seen so many pairs fall out and inevitably something wrong will happen, so it's best to just keep them separate as soon as possible rather than risk serious injury or even death to both hamsters as it isn't like gerbils or rats where they're naturally social and even benefit from being kept together.

Even with two of everything and no platforms of any kind and only using houses with multiple entrances, it's essentially guaranteed that there will be some level of chronic stress involved. Chronic stress in any species leads to a weakened immune system at the very least, but it's even worse with hamsters since stress is even more harmful for their delicate immune systems!

08-10-2019, 08:16 AM
AmityvilleHams PM Fluffy for custom title Join Date: Mar 2016 Posts: 4,545	Re: Hello am new here and would like some cage advice The best thing to completely guarantee you'll never have arguments or even death is to just separate the two hamsters now. Any species of hamster is not truly naturally social including the dwarf species(in the wild they'd be together in mixed sex pairings for breeding purposes but not social purposes). 60 cm x 30 cm is very small however and so are mini dunas. For each hamster, you'd want to aim for 80 x 50 cm to 100 x 50 cm per cage and they should be in one cage each. We've seen so many pairs fall out and inevitably something wrong will happen, so it's best to just keep them separate as soon as possible rather than risk serious injury or even death to both hamsters as it isn't like gerbils or rats where they're naturally social and even benefit from being kept together. Even with two of everything and no platforms of any kind and only using houses with multiple entrances, it's essentially guaranteed that there will be some level of chronic stress involved. Chronic stress in any species leads to a weakened immune system at the very least, but it's even worse with hamsters since stress is even more harmful for their delicate immune systems!