Shallower Substrate?

[Gimleyand Meeko]

Hello Everyone,

I was in tears the other night as I thought Meeko had escaped. I was rummaging around the cage taking out the toys to try and find Meeko. I was about to set up the bucket method to find Meeko and I was going to look everywhere. Meeko then came out from underneath the substrate as to say "What is going on?". So does anybody think that I need to have shallower substrate in Meeko's cage as ErinsAnimals says (in one of her older videos) that she had to put shallower substrate in her cage as she would have lost her hamster in the substrate: NOTE: these were special needs hamsters - Meeko has half of a detolf cage.

Meeko was the last hamster in its litter to be sold and was in the adoption centre of the pets at home shop in a single cage with no cagemate and does not have a cagemate now but is in the detolf cage that has Gimley on the left of the divide and was said to need a little extra help: as I have provided.

Also another quick question: How do you enter the Hamster Picture of the Month Contest?

[Cricetinae]

In my opinion, aside from an enclosure with large surface area, deep substrate is the best thing you can provide for enrichment. If you do provide deep substrate, hamsters will rarely just wander around on top of it, they not only usually instinctively borrow, but also create their own network of tunnels.

If you look at German hamster forums (where rodent quality of life is generally very high) you'll notice many of the cages have very deep substrate for this reason. I also find it allows me to not only scatter food at various locations in the cage, but also at various depths, which encourages foraging.

Not everyone can provide their hamsters with this, and some hamsters don't make use of it. However, if your hamster does seem to enjoy burrowing, it seems a shame to deprive them of this opportunity for fear of not being able to keep track of him/her.

The Hamster of the Month contests can be found here Hamster Photo Contest - Hamster Central (http://www.hamstercentral.com/community/hamster-photo-contest/) with rules and guidance found within the particular thread for that month.

[Dalis_mum]

Leave her with the deep substrate. hamsters are burrowing animals. Meeko was just expressing natural behaviours.

Dali does this, and yes you can have a few minutes of fear, but they get hours of pleasure from building nests.

[cypher]

I agree that a little bit of a scare on your part isn't a reason to deny your ham what it needs in terms of a good deep layer of substrate to burrow in!
I often "lose" mine in the substrate when they burrow down deep but I'm confident their cages are as escape proof as they can be which is the most important thing so I know they're in there somewhere even if I can't see or hear them!

[Pebbles82]

Agree with the others - leave the deep substrate - he came out and found you! For the photo competition, you just do a 'reply' to the topic and add the photo onto that reply, either by pasting a link from photobucket, or by going to advanced and clicking on the paperclip symbol at the top, which will let you browse your computer for a photo - select the photo and click to upload. Wait while it says it is uploading and wait until it is uploaded then close the window. You can type your hamster's name at the beginning of the message box before adding the photo, but otherwise no words, just the photo. Although the upload function shows a small photo at the bottom it gets bigger when people move their mouse over it. For Photobucket, you register, upload your photos onto the site, resize them to about 600 wide on the resize tool on the website, then click on the bottom link at the side of the photo to copy it and paste that link onto the message. In both cases, the photo will appear once you have clicked 'submit'. Hope that made sense!