hamster newbie here! i need help and advice please!

[glu]

Hi there! First off sorry for the long post. I wanted to give as much info as possible

I bought my first ever hamster back in mid Nov2015 (currently Feb 2016) and naively did so without doing extensive research on owning a hamster. My bf has one so I been going off of his advice but since i started noticing things with my Yung Prince (he's a short haired syrian) and did some more research I realized ive done so much wrong and caused this little guy so much stress!!!
I feel horrible about it and want to know what I can do to help my furry friend out.

to give some background I was stupid and bought a hamster right before I was leaving for two weeks for holidays! So i left him with a friend for a few days over Christmas, I came back and spent some time with him before dropping him off at my moms.

second piece of important info is he escaped his cage and got into my walls. he was able to find his way out the next day but ever since then he has been trying to escape everything (cage, ball, even play pen) and seems to always go back to the spaces where he got in and out of the walls. (This is because hes been scratching at the walls which left his scent! of course I didnt know till now!) Now every time I play with him outside the cage all he wants to do is get into the walls again.

no matter how many toys and tubes I give him or play with him outside his cage, he still seems very stressed. He will also eat treats and wont eat his oxbow food ive bought him (i think this is because of the fact that when i cleaned his cage I would also clean his nest which is stupid on my part omg and any food he put in his nest I always put back in his food dish)

k so I didnt know the pet store cages were too small and he's been in a critter trail since Nov. I know it is not big enough and waiting till next pay day to make him a bin cage that also attaches to his current critter trail.

what can I do now until I can get him the bigger cage to help him relax and settle and what can I do after I get him the bigger cage?

[HenriandHobieHammies]

Wow glu!! I think really the best thing you can do right now is kinda start fresh. What I mean is, the second you set up his bin, make sure he is super comfortable, and feels at home. Also, make sure before you tame, try the tissue trick (stick a tissue up your sleeve, and put in in the cage.) If you want to learn more about taming, you can visit the taming section of HC or I've found Erinshamsters on Youtube works quite well!


EDIT:Almost forgot! Welcome to HC!!!!!!

[cypher]

Hi glu, welcome to the forum

We all make mistakes in the beginning so don't beat yourself up about it, you still haven't had your ham all that long so there's plenty of time to rectify things.

I think the most important thing is to get a good size cage set up as soon as you possibly can, if your ham isn't happy in his cage where he'll be spending most of his time he won't be happy at all.
When getting your bin or new cage bear in mind that you'll need to get a good size wheel 11-12", in there, a nice large house & some rat size toys so get as much space as you can for him.

Young hams are full of energy & just love to explore so even without the previous escape it would be natural for him to try to escape his play area, it's what they do so he may not be as stressed as you think! Try & make things as interesting for him as you can & give him plenty of room to explore somewhere escape proof.

Once you have the new cage give him time to settle in without disturbing things any more than you need to, it can time for them to adjust even with changes for the better so don't worry if he doesn't settle straight away.
If he really isn't eating his pellet food either try something different or just cut down on the treats, he will eat it if he has too!