The lovely little Hobbes has been with us for 8 days now and has settled in really well. He's had quite a few changes in the last week - he went from having a loud wheel, house, food bowl, 1cm of substrate and fluffy bedding to having a Flying Saucer, house, sand bath, new food bowl, wooden tunnel, toilet roll bedding and loads more substrate. He will soon be having a cage upgrade too - I have a Kios on order which will be attatched to his Combi.
He has of course also had a name change - from 'Stevie' to 'Hobbes' which suits him much better I reckon
I haven't handled him yet but he's been taking treats from me once he builds up the courage. Last night he took a pine nut from me then nibbled on my finger I think it was because I had been rumaging around with my fingers in the nut box, looking for a pine nut for him and my fingers probably smelt tasty lol. He was really gentle though, could hardly feel his teeth. He also accidently fell half onto my hand and scared himself lol! Silly little hamster.
Since coming and having a sand bath his coat has improved loads, he was greasy looking when he arrived but by the evening, after using his sand bath, he looked loads better and really fluffy
A couple of nights ago his wheel broke - sounded funny so I went and had a look, turned out it had cracked Put in a medium Rolly for him, ordered a Flying Saucer and thankfully that arrived the next day. Although he did use the Rolly OK it took up a lot of room. He seems to love the Flying Saucer, he spent his usual 5 or so hours running on it last night. Is it normal for them to use a wheel so much...? He has breaks every so often, lasting a couple of minutes but he does spend about 5 hours each night running :/
Hobbes and his new wheel -
A couple more random videos of him -
I really am so happy to have him, he's a wonderful little guy. I've got Sam and Bekki to thank, Sam for convincing me to rescue in the first place and Bekki for helping me find rescues by contacting all the Preloved people for me, I know Hobbes wasn't one of them but I wanted to thank you anyway xxx Of course, a big thank you to everyone here has has supported me too, couldn't do it without you guys! xxx
This was Hobbes about 15 minutes ago, just walked past the spare bedroom and noticed he was up. Didn't stay up for long though, think he just wanted a snack and a drink. He's got massive whiskers!
I don't really know how much my current hams run on their wheels as they are in another room across the landing at night with the door firmly closed against marauding felines. But Sebastian used to wheel All Blinking Night. I used to shut his cage in the built in cupboard which housed the washbasin in my student accommodation to try to drown out the noise, with limited success.
Darla is either in his nest or on his wheel he doesn't really seem interested in much else, apart from the odd sand bath I wouldn't worry about him, he's got a lot of energy to burn off and not much space to do it in
He is just lovely SS, it's always great to see a loving new home for a gorgeous little ham. When I got my first robos they did wheel that much as it was a new thing. As long as he's drinking enough and not wearing himself out it's ok. My robos now do wheel a lot, but I think as they've had them from when they were very tiny, they're not as much of a novelty. They still put in a lot of time every night though!
He is a lovely little guy
And all three of ours spend a lot of time on wheels too. Whizz especially. Skip and Muffin often explore the cage and then go to the wheel for ages though.
Well, he's now in the Ferplast Kios. I quite like it in all honesty - it's well made, the base is deep and it was only £30. Two downsides - the door is small and on the top, which makes things a bit more difficult. The other downside being the water bottle. It came with a Ferplast Sippy which Hobbes doesn't seem to know how to use and it bends the bars. Put in his old Ferplast water bottle (classic style) but even that bends the bars and the holder isn't tight/strong enough to hold the water bottle up, it's slipped down so that it's resting on the base by a couple of mm which isn't ideal. I've added a small dish to use as a temporary water bowl for now but plan on getting a small reptile bowl for him ASAP as he seems to prefer the water bowl over the two bottles in there.
Got a video of him having a drink (sorry it's so far away, I didn't want to move to the side of the cage and scare him off) -
He's settled into his new cage well, he's now found the entire cage (first off he only found one side of it lol) and has been spending a lot less time sitting in one place and on his wheel. He seems a little more confident in there too and it's nice being able to interact with him through the bars. He came right up to the bars to say hello to my OH the other day
This is his Kios (slightly different now actually) -
Compared to his old Combi 1 base -
A video of him in his new home (although it does spend most of the video in his Puzzle Playground which he loves) -
This morning I was shocked to find woodshavings all over the floor He has finally discovered he can dig and burrow!! So pleased, even if it does mean more cleaning for me lol
This was his cage this morning, neither my OH or I could figure out where he was sleeping until he popped his head out from underneath his Flying Saucer lol -
All in all I think he's happy in his new home
I'm going to be adding a shelf to his cage, I'm hoping to do a large home made one that I can put his wheel and water bowl on so both are secure and won't get burried in woodshavings. Will have to wait a little bit for that though.