Do I pick her up?

[MissJeliza]

I’ve got a very, very nervous Hamster,
She came to me from a very traumatic situation and because of this she was very mistrustful of humans.
Because of that I decided when I got her that I wouldn’t force her to do things she didn’t want to do, like pick her up instead of let her climb into my hand herself, ect.

Fast forward nearly a year and she is very friendly, she walks around while I’m in her cage and takes food from my hand.
But she doesn’t climb onto me when I show her my hand. She gets scared and just slowly sniffs me and goes away.
I’d like to hold and but I don’t know if I gently grabbed her and put her in my hand if this would traumatise her again.
Obvious I don’t want to do that, but what if she would like to sit in my hand?

Do you see my dilemma?

What should I do?

[cypher]

Do you just feed her from your fingers or put food on your palm?
If you put food on your palm then she would probably climb on to take it & get more confident with being on your hand then you can just gently lift her maybe an inch or so just for a few seconds & gradually increase the height & time that you lift her, then try cupping one hand over her or let her run from one hand to the other, it may still be a slow process if she's nervous but she should get there with time & patience.

[MissJeliza]

Hi yes I feed her from my fingers and hand but she has never even put her paws onto my hand to get the food, if she can’t reach it she doesn’t take it.
If I lay my hand flat in front of her she won’t walk into it either 😕

[cypher]

It's probably still worth persevering with getting her to take food from your hand, if you begin with putting it on your fingers where she can just reach then gradually begin to move it further onto your hand she might slowly gain confidence if you use something really tasty & irresistible!
I would imagine if you tried to do it any other way like scooping her up with two hands she would just get a bit stressed.
Another thing to try is to see if you can get her to climb into something like a tube, mug, box or something, put a treat inside to tempt her, then let her climb out over your hands.