On Saturday I got a Syrian hamster. An acquaintance had got in touch with me to explain that they were leaving the country, and could take in their 2-year-old hamster, or find him a home. So I said I could give him a home myself.
At some point after we had arranged the rehoming but before they brought him to me, he developed a swollen left eye. The owners took him to the vet and he was prescribed a course of fusidic acid eye drops and metacam, and the vet also recommended an over-the-counter eye lotion to use afterwards.
When the hamster arrived he was on Back 2 Nature paper pellets which I'm not really keen on for hamster bedding as they're heavy and rough and can't be burrowed in. I was slightly conflicted on what to do, as doing a full bedding change in addition to a change of home is a lot of change for an old hamster, but since they had changed the bedding just before bringing him to me I decided that I might change it to Fitch now. It would disrupt the hamster whenever I did it, so it seemed better to get it over with. Before changing the bedding his eye was swollen closed. There was some slight crusting but not much discharge. But the next time I saw the hamster after changing the bedding, the eye was open and clean. So I don't know if it was a bedding issue, or just an intermittent problem that coincidentally resolved after I changed the bedding.
I wanted to avoid making big changes in addition to the bedding change, so the only thing I did was add a larger house for him. He only had two little plastic huts before. He's still sleeping in one of the huts. Should I take the huts away? Or just wait a bit longer?
He already has a suitable wheel (Savic Rolly) and the cage is not a bad size for an elderly hamster (Pets at Home XL). The cage is awkward to access though due to the tiny door. I have a
new-style Grosvenor cage. Not the one with the top opening door but a different one that's slightly bigger (80x48cm and 40cm high) and has a front door. I've been weighing up the pros and cons of leaving him where he is settled vs moving him to a cage with slightly more space and more convenient access. Does anyone have any advice or thoughts on that?
I set up the motion-activated camera last night and saw that he was fairly active. He has no trouble with mobility and he even ran on his wheel. He's been moving lots of bedding around too.
His name is Kebab and I'm going to keep his old name since he's had it for 2 years already. I don't have a good photo of him yet but here is a short clip from the motion camera:
https://i.imgur.com/Na0kgOp.mp4. He is a satin but I'm not sure of his colour.