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View Full Version : Sleeping in tubes and other randomness


squirrel
02-02-2011, 04:47 PM
Hello all, new person here! Brief intro: I have two young male chinese hamsters, with a background in gerbil ownership and some experience with a syrian hamster that I adopted from my sister when she moved half way across the world for work! The syrian was quite elderly and sadly died a few months into my fostering, bless him - but that was hopefully just from extended age rather than my care since I'm still going strong with a pair of rescue gerbils nearly two years after I adopted them!

Since I had a quantity of rotastak houses without a resident I decided I'd better solve that problem - more gerbs were tempting but I keep my girls in a large tank with a home-built topper and think that their obsession with tunnelling better suits that sort of home, so I decided to expand my hamster experience with a pair of chinese. I may have been partially swayed by the fact that they are the most gerbil-ish looking hams; who knows! I did check all the local rescues but none had any dwarves of any kind, so they came from a local petshop as little furry dots of things - amazingly tiny compared to hefty adult gerbils and an even heftier male syrian! I've had them coming up for a month and they've grown quite a bit; particularly certain parts of their anatomy - I knew boy chinese had prominent equipment but never quite how prominent...

Anyhoo, I'd acquired more rotastak bits from ebay so they have a large setup with two kidney units and two wheels, several round units, dining room units and little add-ons, as well as a partial-caged unit plus lots and lots of tubes to join them all together on a small set of shelves. I was also sure to give them a few different sleeping spaces so they have a couple of bought igloos/dens and a few small cardboard boxes with plenty of shredded tissue bedding. They've sometimes been sleeping together and sometimes apart and I've been getting them out in a playpen box to get them used to me, but in the last few days they've taken to hiding out in a corner section of tube (90 degree angle piece) if I disturb them, and now they're actually sleeping out there and dragged tissue to snooze amongst! I get that they must feel that's a safe space since I can't poke at them or get them out of there unless I take the tubes apart, but really I'd prefer they were sleeping in a proper nestbox rather than crammed into an enclosed plastic tube. Any advice on whether that's likely to be a passing phase and how to encourage them back to their boxes? Move some of the used bedding back to the boxes? Take it out and wash that bit of tube each day? Or just leave them to it?

On a different note I have been trying to encourage the boys to use a glass jar as a toilet like my gerbs do (they picked it up spontaneously!) but the boys seem to prefer their wheel and the plastic tubes. I clean the wheels each day, but taking all the tubes apart is quite a job (lots of curved pieces - several spaghetti junctions worth, and that's a pain in the neck to rebuild) so I'm doing it about once a week when I start to spot little "puddles" and droppings here and there. Does that sound about right?

fluffymunchkins
02-03-2011, 12:54 PM
Welcome :)
Normally I would reccommend that you remeove the tubes and replace them once the hamster/s have established a new nest. But obviously with the rotstak this isn't really possible.
But if my chinese boy is anything to go by, they do tend to have odd sleeping habits :roll:
It might be that after your next cage clean out they chnage their minds if another nest takes their fancy.
Chinese are very shy at first also, so maybe once they are more confident they will change nests :)

Another thing I will mention is that Chinese pairs quite often have to be split due to fighting, boys tens to be better than girls but its 50:50 to whether they will get along.
Rotastak (or any compartment cages) isn't a great choice for pairs as the differents rooms can often cause territorial issues.
Saying tht i did have a pair of robos in a big rotastak set up with no problems. So just keep a close eye on them, checking for any injuries and be prepared to split if blood is drawn.

You may want to only clean the wheels every 2 or 3 days as usually the more you clean the more they will pee as you have destroyed their scent. Chinese boys are incredibly messy ;) As long as the tubes aren't building up ammonia or getting the boys dirty when they go through, cleaning once a week should be fine

KatiePillow
02-03-2011, 01:00 PM
Also, chineses do tend to pee in their wheels, mine does,
Apparently they actually pee in it more if they get it cleaned every day, so only clean it every 3 days or so.
My chinese currently is sleeping behind her wheel, so yeah..they do sleep in odd places
>.<