Food in wheel causing lack of exercise or starving?

[gurneyliu]

I see there already being a lot of discussion on this topic, but I have question on two specific issues that may be caused by food on the wheel.

My hamster is in another room so noise is not really an issue for me. What I'm worried about are the following two potential issues:

1. The noise of the pile of food on the wheel seems to startle my hamster when he runs, therefore limiting his exercise time. Every night he would come out and run for like half to one hour with no problem. But once he starts to forage and put food on his wheel, he often gets startled by the noise and would hesitate to keep running.

I found that this is really only an issue whenever I put a big millet or other spray in the cage, as that would create a lot of hoarding. So I just stopped putting big millet sprays. Problem kind of solved. As a small pile of food on the wheel does not scare him much.


1. And this brings us to the second issue: when I don't put a big millet spray in the cage, while scatter feed a reasonable daily amount of mixed food, my hamster would still put some of the food he foraged on the wheel. The food on the wheel will then be thrown away as he runs.

My worry is that under the second situation, although he will have enough run time, will he starve as the food being thrown away from the wheel and get scattered in the cage again.