[rossm]

Hi all,

I'm Ross and I'm new to this forum. I have a beautiful little Syrian called Rolo (female). We got her on the 16 April 21 and she came from Pets at Home , so was probably about 4-6 weeks old by that time? Therefore I'd guess her to be about 5.5/6 months old. She is usually fit and well - a happy, energetic hamster. Yesterday evening we went out for dinner. We can't have been gone more than 3 hours. When we returned, we were distraught to see that it looked like our beloved Rolo had died. She was on the cage floor in a forward foetal position. She was still and cold, limp and her eyes were closed. However, when I picked her up, she wriggled her hind legs and her whiskers moved. I called our vet immediately (it was about 10.15pm by then) and they said to take her straight in, which we did. The night emergency vet examined her and agreed she was very poorly and would be unlikely to make it. They agreed to do supportive care over night - warm her up on a heat mat, administer fluids IV, feed her up, test her blood sugar etc. No call over night to say it had gone downhill and the day vet called in the morning to say surprisingly she had made good progress and had eaten, drank, urinated and done a poop. All the vets at our practice are comfortable looking after exotics / rodents, but their specialist exotic vet only works 3 days a week. So I agreed for them to keep her in and support her today. The vet called again just now to say that she continued to improve. Apparently this morning she had some slight jerks/shakes but this has now settled down. The vet did an X-ray today and found no obvious breaks of bones or any other issue that would be picked up by an X-ray. We agreed for Rolo to stay with them tonight for continued supportive care and the exotics vet would examine her in the morning to try and get to the bottom of what caused it and what investigations or treatments need to be carried out going forwards.

So I'm just wandering if anyone else has encountered a similar issue with their hammy and what the issue turned out to be and what treatments were needed and what the prognosis looks like. To give some further background:

Rolo is usually very friendly and loves human company. However, she recently bit my partner very hard and there was a lot of bleeding from my partner's thumb. She then did the same to me on Tuesday evening. It wasn't a 'nibble' - she bit hard and held onto my thumb. Instinctively I mistakingly but automatically shook her off my hand. I was sat on a chair and she landed on the chair, but I wander if some trauma was sustained on the way down. Also, the biting is out of character for her.

Her cage is in our living room and the temperature is about 23°C - I brought a thermometer today to monitor and it's stayed at 23°C most of the day. This morning before I brought the thermometer, it was colder but I couldn't test the temperature as I didn't have the thermometer.

Usually she has a fairly regular sleep/wake cycle, getting up about 5/5.30pm for us to feed her, then she usually goes back in her house taking her food with her and eats it in there and presumably has a nap and comes out fully at about 8pm. She has seemed to be waking more and more during the day. The curtain in the room is almost always shut, but light still gets in above a small window above the front door and sometimes we open the curtain a little.

She has about 15-20 minutes exercise in a ball per day, but hadn't had for about a week, as her ball broke and we were awaiting a replacement - we let her run around the spare room instead in the interim.

We feed her a pet store own blend of hamster museli - 1 teaspoon a day (approx. 6 grams). She also has 1 disk of Timothy hay per week (about the size of a 2p coin), about 3 mealworms a week and a strip of veg (she loves peppers) on about 3 or 4 days out of 7.

She is out of her cage for play and interaction with us about 4 times a day for short bursts of about 10/15 minutes each time.

We have two Pets at Home half wire half plastic cages, linked by tubing. One of the cages has a large flying saucer and a rope ball and tug of war toy made of wood and rope and some wood chew rings hanging from the side of the cage. The other cage has her little house, food bowl (although usually we sprinkle feed her for enrichment), a little litter tray usually filled with critter litter and recently we added in a burrow box with a ladder. Both cages have water bottles which I check for operation daily and change the water twice a week. The substrate for the floor is dust-extracted wood shavings suitable for hammies and the bedding varies - usually a soft paper blend or cotton style paper blend or the wool style that comes from the pods of the Kopi tree. We sometimes give her the pods to crack herself and remove the seeds as a treat to eat and then scrape out the bedding.

Each cage is cleaned once a week with rodent safe disinfectant and kitchen roll and we spot clean for poops and replace wet bedding throughout the week. As well as bedding being replaced once weekly during the main clean, her little house is usually cleaned and clean bedding put in half way through the week as well.

Since we have had her, she had potential wet tail one and had antibiotics for it and also was quite lethargic one evening but perked up on the drive to the vets.

I have pet insurance for Rolo with a specialist insurer for exotics with £2000 cover per annum. If she ever needs to see a vet, she does without question and her welfare comes first every time. We also let her use her sand bath for about 15 minutes about 3 times a week. The vets this time said she seems too skinny. When I weighed her about 6 weeks ago, she was 113g which I gathered was acceptable (most online sources say about 100-200g is about right?).

My main worries, are:

1) Why has she suddenly started biting.

2) Is about 23°C a sufficient room temperature?

3) I appreciate usually it's contra-indicated to have a hamster near a TV (as is the case as we have her in our lounge), but she loves human interaction so we thought she liked to be near where we were most of the time.

4) Most likely causes? Is it likely I caused her harm when I shook her off?

We love her to bits - she has such a loving and funny little personality and brings us so much joy, we just hope she recovers.

Any wisdom from any fellow hammy fans much appreciated.

Best,

Ross