Hamster Squabbles
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.
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