Hamster Squabbles

[jamesrln]

Hello,

I was hoping for a little bit of advice as I am completely new to hamsters and I'm a bit worried about some of their behavior at the moment. If I start from the top and then work my way to some questions, I hope that it all makes sense.

A week and half ago we acquired 3 dwarf hamsters from a family of 7 siblings. They are all females (Penfold, Milly and Poppy). Although shy to begin with, it was only a couple of days before they seemed to be settled in their new cage and they were all getting along perfectly well together. However, over the past couple of days the hamsters seem to be fighting quite a lot and quite often we've had to go and keep them apart for a while.

At first it was only two (Milly and Poppy) that seemed to be bickering with each other from time to time, but now it seems that there is one in particular that is 'bullying' both the others (Poppy). Is this serious at all or is it fairly normal for them to squabble? When it's feeding time they've always been fine all 3 of them sat in the food bowl together munching away. Though today, one (Poppy) chased the other two off after a couple of minutes together in the bowl.

However, as I write this, Penfold is sat on top of Poppy (the aggressor) sleeping happily side by side again, whilst Milly is not really joining them, but all is quiet. We are obviously concerned for all the hamsters and wonder what, if anything, we can do to help?

Another quick question, do the hamsters drink that much? Obviously they are nocturnal, so we don't see them around that much during the day, but even in the evenings they don't seem to be drinking from the bottle much at all. In fact, in the week and a half we've had these 3 gorgeous critters I think I've seen a hamster drink from the bottle maybe only 2 times, which seems odd! Any advice on this too?

Really do appreciate any help, thanks.

[souffle]

Hello and welcome.
This is a major problem with dwarfs and we see it over and over again on the forum. When hamsters start to mature and their hormones kick in they often start to fight. With dwarfs, three does tend to be a crowd. It is better to just have two togther but frequently this does not work either.
The rule of thumb is that if blood is drawn you should separate however over the years of watching what happens with fighting dwarfs I feel that you should not wait for this to happen as one often is seriously hurt. If you scroll through WW and Campbells threads you will see many tales of fighting.
You can try and lessen the tensions by immediatly removing the food bowl. They get territorial over such things and Poppy obviously is. This leads to the victims losing weight and condition and being scared to come near the food bowl. You should scatter food and hide it so all can get some as the bully can't be everywhere at once. Always handle all hamsters together and rub them over each other to mingle the scents. Scent is crucial and you need to do half cage cleans to keep the scent. Make sure the cage has three of everything such as wheels, nest boxes, toys so someone does not hog things. Also give deep litter they can burrow into to get away from each other. Three dwarfs need quite a large space of around 75x40x30cm at least. If the bully is constantly chasing, you get high pitched frantic screaming and she is turning the others upside down I personally would separate her out now. See if the two submissive ones will settle together. Don't try and reintroduce her if you do as it will all end in tears I fear. She will be fine alone and you will feel more confident. If the other two fight you may end up with three cages and I assure you this is not at all unusual. in fact most pairs end up needing separated. A bullied hamster can be very miserable, withdrawn and lose condition. Once alone they become very peole friendly and content.
Good luck and let us know how they do.

[jamesrln]

Thanks for the reply.

We made the litter deeper this week and they really seemed to have enjoyed being able to basically submerge themselves from time to time. In terms of cage size, perhaps our is too small for the three of them. We've got a Rudy by Savic which is approximately 60x30x30cm. As I was saying, it's only really the last couple of days this aggression has been occurring, but today I noticed that Poppy forced Penfold on to her back, which I assumed was simply submissive behavior and maybe just an act of establishing a hierarchy?

Ideally, we'd like to keep them together, but whatever is best for their health is obviously most important here, so if we need to seperate, we will.