Re: Gertie had babies!!
Thank you both for the reassuring words.
I don't think that keeping a baby would benefit Gertie in any way because i would never house two hamsters together, not even a mother and daughter.
Babies are weaned at 3 weeks and they're probaby 2 weeks old now so in theory they would be able to leave their mother in a week's time. I'd prefer to keep them with their mother until they're 4 weeks old but at the same time need to avoid a further pregnancy.
I rescued a litter of 4 little dwarf babies once and one of them turned out to be pregnant already so i know at how young an age they are able to reproduce.
Gertie has had 3 litters in quick succession so her welfare is equally as important as that of her babies.
The babies are already running up and down the bridges, sit on the platform to munch on seeds, drink from both the bottle and the bowls, like to sit in the sand to wash and run in and out the house. They already behave like proper hamsters and even come up to the door to take mealworms from my fingers.
A couple climbed on the flying saucer but took fright when it started to move and quickly jumped off.
At first Gertie went after them and pulled them off the bridges then frogmarched them back to the nests but while doing so another appeared to climb on top of the house etc.
Last night a baby was on a corner shelf and tried to figure out how to get down before going down the ladder it had come up. Gertie sat in her ceramic hide but didn't get up to drag the baby off the shelf.
I think that if i would level out the set up now the babies might get bored and spent more time around their mother resulting in Gertie getting no rest at all.
Of course, i could see this all wrong but can't get rid of the feeling that Gertie is trying to communicate something to me. She keeps coming to her door. At first i thought that she was asking for more food but she has lots of food now so it's not that.
Unfortunately, i'm at work till late afternoon tomorrow so can't "talk" to Gertie for ages. Something i'm not very happy about but will ask my OH to send me video updates.
This photo is from this morning with Gertie snoozing in her ceramic hide, some babies in the sand front right, inside the house, underground, in a foodbowl.....
I have no idea if this is a typical, idyllic hamster family scenario or should Gertie be amongst her babies?
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