[Bobby88]

Hello!

I am new here and would appreciate any advice on how to deal with the behavior of our new cute hamster.

Four days ago we brought home a 30 days old Russian dwarf boy, Choco is his name.
This is our first time with a hamster pet.
We had his home all ready, following the information given out by Victoria Raechel on her youtube, purchased a Savic Hamster Heaven Metro cage with a plenty of bedding and all essentials. We took possession of Choco in the evening and put him in the new cage.

When we woke up the next morning we saw that Choco dug and made a burrow as his home at one end of the cage where 7 inches of bedding is placed. We are happy to see this since he seem to have made a good home out of it. Attached photos of the cage and the burrow hole.

He sleeps during the day and wakes up around 4pm as we can hear him making noise. But as soon as we go over to look he goes and hides in the burrow.
In the past four days, we have yet to see Choco.

We see the evidence of his foot prints on the sand bath, and the food and snacks that he eats, so we believe he is active.

Last night we placed a camera on the cage with indirect dim light in his room, and took the video of the cage all night. We saw him come out of burrow after everyone slept. He was using the wheel running about 10 min every 2 hours and wondered around the cage snacking drinking etc for about 20 min every 2 hours as well.

We like to be able to interact with our hamster and tame him, but it is not possible given the first 4 days, we have yet to see him.

We saw on ErinsAnimal youtube where she explains how to tame a hamster and suggesting that if a hamster hides, to move him to a cage with less bedding and in open with one small hut with bedding in it to hide. We only have one cage and we feel very bad to destroy his burrow home and concerned that he might get stressed/traumatized by it.

We want Choco to get to know us and be tamed so he can trust us and feel comfortable around us. But in order to break the current situation/cycle, should we go ahead and destroy his burrow home and rearrange the cage so he is forced to be in an open visible and to interact with us? Any other option?

If you have any input/advise on what we should do, please respond.

Thanks in advance!