Should I be worried?

[Chonkers2]

Mulans been making a sort of clucking/ sneezing noise a lot lately. I've only had her for a few days so I'm not sure if it's just her being vocal. I noticed she was doing it pretty much every few seconds when she went into her cage after dinner so I coaxed her into a bin to see if i could get a better look.

(If I can) I'll attach a video of it. She seems to do it more when she's in her bedding so I've switched it out for toilet paper to see if that's better. I'm not sure if it's sneezing or excited clucking or what

Any help would be appreciated. I'm a very worried Mum here!

[Chonkers2]

HAha, I changed her bedding and now she's sulking by sleeping in a tube
Here's the video
https://vid.me/yiZg

[Thin Lizzy]

It doesn't sound like sneezing. What kind of bedding did you have before?

[cypher]

It doesn't sound like sneezing to me either as far as I can tell from the vid (very cute btw!) so it probably isn't the bedding although some hams are a bit sensitive to wood shavings especially if they're a bit dusty. Paper based bedding like Fitch, if you have the space to store it, carefresh or hemp bedding may be better.
She's bound to be a bit upset if you change the bedding as you will have removed her scent but she'll get over that.
It sounds a bit like the noises mine sometimes makes when she has food in her pouches so it could be something like that but I'm really not sure tbh.

[racinghamster]

Whatever you do, don`t buy Carefresh. It`s even more likely to cause issues than the shavings are due to the dust. Shavings are fine, you just need to give them a good airing a month before using them and store what you are going to use in an open storage box rather than the bag. Fitch is very good but unless you want a very large bale, I`m not sure what size sacks it comes in. But it is a better alternative to wood shavings. Carefresh is wood pulp and not paper based.

If Mulan becomes very noisy and squeaky even by taking these measures, I would see your vet who will prescribe Baytril. It`s fine to put Baytril in the water. My friend has done this for her Chinese hamster in the past and it done the trick. Her male had the sniffles too but it wasn`t clearing up and he loved to dig right down into his deep substrate.

[Chonkers2]

Quick update: she's stopped doing her weird clucking noise now. I think maybe it was something stuck in her pouch.
Since she's stopped she's got super friendly, and I've learned is very vocal, she seems to squeak in excitement every time she gets food and when she's running on the wheel! Thanks for your help though - appreciated

[Thin Lizzy]

That's good to hear!

[racinghamster]

Really pleased to hear that. x