vicious hybrid

[cypher]

I think what Erin has written is pretty widely known & accepted by people who take the time to do some research on their hybrids Skeever. It is horrific but also a very difficult problem, I often end up asking myself just how selfish I'm being having a hamster at all, even adopting is perpetuating the cycle, they have animals they can't sell, we take them off their hands & so they just keep producing more, I'm not sure there will ever be a remotely easy answer to that problem.
If only we all had access to good breeders or even rescues & could avoid pet shops altogether but I can't really see that happening.

That said although there are a lot of potential problems with hybrids I do think it can get a bit blown out of proportion as many of them live healthy, happy lives with the right care.

Wendy sorry I forgot you were in the US when I suggested zooplus! Hope you can find a suitable playpen at a decent price somewhere over there.

[Skeever]

That was my response. As someone who does not have dwarves, it was the summary of all the bits of info you can find elsewhere. I wasn't aware that Erin's had text pages as well was my main surprise. It's not a secret certainly when it comes to dwarves. It does make a very strong emotional case for simply not feeding into the hybrid industry. With first hand experience of a hybrid that had a number of the problems associated with the hybrid breeding process; that made the page more chilling.

As far as solutions, you're right. Same goes for any poorly run pet shop. Well, I'm saving this poor critter translates into I'm convincing the owner of the shop to keep ordering them, since they DO sell!

Not having access to breeders etc, complicates it all. Knowing that some cases of owning hybrids can be generally positive and wonderful experiences is a different issue from the business of producing and selling them. It's like classifying things generally and saying , Hamsters? They BITE! If by 'blowing it out of proportion' you mean somehow blaming it on the hybrids themselves and telling people they're horrible pets and sickly and so on? then yeah. If you mean the case for , let's say, banning the entire breeding process of hybrids? I'm not sure anything is too extreme a view of the situation. People profit, the animals suffer and many of us end up with a pet that no one bothered to explain the thorniness of the issue to. Until we get one. And research.

Having come very, very close to rescuing a hybrid a few months back, I am of a 'slightly' different mind now. It's a strong argument against trying to save one animal and yet causing venal shop owners (it was a pretty bad shop overall!) to carry on 'supplying' the demand and the pet farming practices. I feel a little better not having given into the impulse. If only because there would be ten more litters by now of the little cuties cuz they sell like hotcakes to a greedy shop owner. I can't say we ever feel better not rescuing that one individual fuzzbutt though....

It's the old vicious cycle of 'the people who know about hybrids don't need to read about it. The people who need to read about it? Don't.....

[cypher]

Skeever all I meant by blown out of proportion is that sometimes the impression one gets is that all hybrids are sick, diabetic or have neurological/behavioural problems which is a shame as many are healthy happy pets & it can be a bit scary for someone who's just acquired one.
Also the results of not really knowing how to tame or handle them properly can be blamed on neurological or some other hybrid problem.
Otherwise I agree with you entirely, just sometimes wish I didn't love the little blighters quite so much! I think I'll just have to let a robo adopt me one of these days!

[Pebbles82]

I had heard of these issues with hybrids, but the article does make it very clear that hybrid breeding is a bad thing, and is also informative letting people know the virtually all winter whites or campbells from pet shops will be hybrids.

Anyway - Wendy it sounds like diet might help. Although Erin's hamster was diabetic which was the reason she changed her to a sugar-free diet, she did say this calmed her behaviour as well. This makes sense to me as it is similar to children with ADHD. A sugar, chemical free diet works wonders with their behaviour apparently.

So maybe you could start with her diet. I'm not sure if any of the mixes are sugar free, someone else might know. But no fruit, just veg maybe (there are natural sugars in them but a lot less in veg than fruit) and no sugary treats. As for the playpen, could you make one out of correx? There's a thread on here about it and it is very easy. I bought some correx to do this but haven't actually done it yet. You just need to fold it like cardboard and clip the pieces together with bulldog clips. I got some huge sheets of it for about £10 ($7 ish?).

Other than that, maybe you could see a vet who uses homeopathic vet medicines as homeopathy is supposed to be very good for all kinds of conditions including neurological ones (Cypher probably knows more about that!). I know a lot of uk vets use homeopathy and find it very successful with animals with behavioural problems.

[cypher]

Diet is never a bad place to start especially with a diabetes prone species, as well as following the basic sugar free, high protein & fibre diet plan you could try adding some fenugreek seeds to her diet, either the plain dried seeds or you can sprout them & feed as a veg, if her blood sugar levels are spiking a bit that could help balance it out.
Also if you scatter feed it will give her a bit more to do & help to keep her occupied.
I really don't know if they have the same effect on hams as humans but you could also try adding some lemon balm & chamomile to her cage to see if that would calm her down, they're both safe for hams so it won't do any harm.
I agree homeopathy could be helpful but I wouldn't suggest using any remedies without the advice of homeopathic vet, any animal really needs to be seen & observed & the vet needs to know a lot about them to accurately use remedies.
If she keeps biting your hands it might be best not to feed her anything by hand for a while so she doesn't associate your hand with food, if you need to you could try going back to using gloves for a while & see if she stops.
Cage aggression may be due to the top access with a bin & nothing to do with size, I known all of mine have really hated being approached from above, not a lot you can do about that I guess but worth bearing in mind that it could be a cause & not viciousness!

[Peanut84]

Skeever, if you are worried about how hamsters are bred you can't buy any hamsters from pet shops not only hybrids, because they are all bred under pretty horrible conditions. This is about how rats are bred, but it is basically the same for hamster:
Why not use Pet Shops?
That said, I think the bad reputation hybrids have is a bit unfair, I think they make lovely pets and I hope people are not discouraged from adopting them.
I have two hybrids (one adopted and one from a pet shop, before I researched breeding practices) and they are lovely. They are both a bit nippy, but I think when they bite me, it is more an inquisitive nip and not a vicious bite.

[Pygmypuff]

Peanut, I just checked on the link you sent in your post.

I just can't believe it. I never knew that went on.

I feel physically sick and I have no other way to explain it. The pictures are awful, it's disgusting. I don't know what to say.

[itswendy]

Coco begs to come out of the cage a LOT and then when I do offer her my hand, she'd rather bite it than get on it. Once she's out of the cage though, she's super sweet. I'm not sure if it is because I'm reaching in from the top because in her old wired cage she was still cage aggressive (the door was on the front). Also she sleeps a lot, I used to think it was normal until I got my Syrian who's almost always up when I am. She does come out at night though.
For her diet, I'm in the process of switching over to Hazel Hamster (with all the peas + corn removed). So she'll be on hazel hamster, oxbow, and I add in a pinch of oats. She's drinking and eating normally, her pee is normal. clear I think? and her poo is kind of mushy when it first comes out.

[cypher]

Wendy don't remove the peas & corn from the food, it's not necessary unless your ham is actually diabetic & being fed under vets guidance, it will just upset the nutritional balance of the food.

An in depth look at pet shop breeding really isn't pleasant I agree Peanut, it's a really horrible issue to even contemplate

[Skeever]

Peanut, you seem to think I am blaming hybrids or calling them vicious. I'm pretty sure everyone here knows the horrors of pet breeding farms. I for one, find it hard to call any animal vicious by nature, since its such a human term for animals really. The distinction I was trying to make was that I would prefer of course, never to use a pet shop (for the most part) and always get any pet, even a mutt or mongrel, from a less commercial venue...where such retail abuses don't happen. I didn't say that hybrids MUST be damaged, diseased, prone to illnesses and weaker....though often they are. The double bind problem of hybrids is a bad retail system of selling any animal (Which some of us, if we are to have a pet are forced to have some connection with) AND? the very heartless concept not only of breeding two species but to try and sell them as a new product, when they are living creatures never meant to breed, much less be sold in bins at a store.

The original mating of the two may very well have been for scientific purposes (another can of worms for animal rights people) but when it became a way to make money and sell them as a product, that's just pure evil. The marketers, not the animals. Mules don't ask to be mules, hybrids don't ask to be bred and born. I wouldn't even assume, if a hybrid came my way, that it was sickly etc, unless it had problems. But the original reason they are on the market is if possible, worse than many other pets sold as products, because it's known how many problems they can face due to forcing something to happen that nature had no intention of doing. And persevering in that practice based on sales.

If I wanted to be an activist, I would agree that buying from a petshop is something I will never do, because the whole principle is warped. Hybrid dwarves are simply twice as wrong because of the realities under discussion. Would I refrain from buying ANY animal in a petshop, given the realities of my life? Well, clearly I haven't. Would I refrain now, from buying a hybrid because I like dwarf hamsters? Yes. Would I refrain from caring for one, rescuing one? No.

I had a small issue with this thread title, before I read it, when I read someones pet called vicious. Because I don't think animals have some vicious gene until you put them in front of human beings. Then we call them vicious because they don't like us and attack us. That's my problem, and of course I read the post and felt that was a semantic argument not worth wasting time on. I call my pets ALL kinds of names, lol.....

I may have seen your article link before, but, I will look again, since its something I do need to factor in when deciding to buy a pet. And then, forearmed with knowledge, I will choose to get a pet, or not. I don't think anyone here is a staunch supporter of the pet industry to be honest. There are too few postive stories and a lot of horrific things. Unfortunately, and this may be a stretch, the same goes for , lets say....food. If you found out where what you ate came from? You'd have to stop eating most of the food you eat.

It comes down to compromises we make, must make or are willing to make. To think that what I said earlier is some kind of OMG condemnation of hybrids though, is to get something from it that I never intended.