People witht loads of hamsters!

[Bourne Valley Hams]

I do have a lot of hamsters (about 70 Syrians). My life does revolve around them, hamsters - keeping, showing, running the club, are my social life. Most of my friends are from the hamster club. I don't go out very much, but I don't miss it. I never have holidays, but I hate going away anyway. I work from home and can spend a lot of time during the day as well as evening with my hamsters, sometimes when work is busy I do have to work very long hours - but on quiet days I can spend the time in the hamstery. My house is very untidy - but life is too short for housework!! When you dust it only comes back again.
I have become very efficient over the years at cleaning cages, I can clean a cage very quickly now. My hamsters don't get as much one to one attention or out of cage time as they would if I only had a couple of hamsters, but they are healthy, tame and happy. I do have to have quite a strict routine with them to fit everything in but somehow it never becomes a chore. If I didn't enjoy doing it, or felt the animals were suffering in any way, I would cut down my numbers (I have now got about 30 fewer than I did at one time).
I am probably a little mad - but I am happy!!

[I_am_plankton]

I always admire people like you Sue, who are really 100% dedicated - socially with the club, and also to have that many hamsters

I only have 6 hamsters, so I find I clean cages on Sundays and every other Monday when I don't work on that Monday, I have a rota and do cages every 2 weeks. I then find my daily rota for handling/out of cage time is is 4 hamsters - for example day 1 is Pearl, Yoshi, Opal and Fawn. Day 2 is Pearl, Yoshi, Felix and Titch - I find the dwarfs don't require as much of my time as the Syrians. Pearl and Yoshi get 30 - 45 minutes each a day, and the dwarfs variable from 15 minutes to 40 minutes depending on what they seem to want. Feeding and doing water bottles takes about 10 minutes or 15.

On average on a daily basis I would say they take up about an hour and a half of my time, on a cage cleaning day I would 3 hours depending on cages.

I also keep 2 rabbits which I spend roughly an hour a day with

[NaomiR]

Hamsters (and guinea pigs) are my hobby and if they ever started to take over my life it wouldn't be a hobby any more and I don't think I'd get as much fun and excitement out of it.

I bred and exhibited guinea pigs for 7 years and it totally wore me out, I'm taking it a bit easier with the hammies but I'll make sure I never get up to the numbers and demands of a proper Guinea Pig Stud that was just TOO MUCH!

Comparitively speaking I'm finding the hammies A LOT easier, but then I have less and don't go to as many show - I've been to one this year and I'm going to go to Reading in September but I was doing 2 or 3 a month before so was always working towards or from a show which was exhausting.

Plus you don't have to bath hammies so the preparation is minimal

And cleaning out cages is A LOT easier than scrubbing down hutches every 4 days