Cleaning his cage - what did we do wrong? I think we upset him.

[TomsKeeper]

We got Tom (Syrian) a few weeks ago. With regards to cleaning his cage, there is one corner where he seems to sleep AND poop AND hid his food. when cleaning his cage what I have done is just replaced the sawdust and bedding and swept that corner clean and then put some new bedding and sawdust.

This weekend we decided to clean out the whole thing. We put him in a ball (for the first time) and took everything out of his cage and put fresh everything in. We scattered some fresh food around too.

To cut a long story short when he got back into the cage he made a NEW nest in a different corner from usual and he stuffed so much into his pouches I nearly had a heart attack. It was like stuffed to halfway down his body!

What I wanted to know is did we upset him somehow and if so what should we do differently in the future?

[Onion]

It sounds normal to me, my syrian does the same every time I clean the cage out. I think he is just replenishing his food store, and with regards to the nest, if they dont have a house and just make an open nest they often change their nest position. It doesn't sound like you need to worry to me

[LocoRocoPanda]

My only tip for you would be to keep some of his old sawdust and mix it in with the new to keep some of his scent. It tends to help my hams to settle quicker. However they do enjoy making nests so I wouldn't worry too much.

[stellanova1]

I used to have a hammy who stored a little of his food mix in every corner of his cage, and when we cleaned him out, he would run about frantically checking each corner....so we ended up putting a little food mix in each corner when we cleaned the cage, this seemed to help him to be less frantic lol

[newham]

I put a little food back in Buttons store corners and she seems fine but she doesnt like clean out either, a bit of old stuff over the new for the scent and all my hammies settle.