My college project on housing

[MsCrumbyy]

I should probably start by saying I attended an agricultural college and studied animal management, so it's not actually as out of the ordinary as it may seem. Also, the hamsters I used belonged to the college as part of their animal study centre.
As part of my second year on my national diploma we had to do a kind of mini-dissertation kind of project- we had to research a chosen topic, and then design and carry out a kind of experiment which either backs up or disproves a theory.
I chose to study hamsters in various kinds of housing. It was a long project, and I have to admit kind of boring to watch them for so long (I ended up doing 100 hours of obvervations in each housing design). I worked with 5 male syrians, who were housed originally in plain wire cages which obviously weren't ideal. I also used a duna design and an ovo set up for each hamter (it had a ton of extensions and compartments).

The whole purpose was to work out which cage housed a happier, more active hamster and the results were as follows:

• Wire cage- The hamsters here spent a lot of time being completely inactive and the time they did spend out and about was usually bar chewing or eating. Obviously bar chewing is undesirable. Also, the hamsters very rarely used their wheel, they simply had no interest in doing very much.
• Duna- The Duna encouraged them to be a little more active- there were shelves and ladders and a few more toys, although they still remained fairly inactive. There was no bar chewing, simply because they couldn't reach what few bars there were.
• Ovo- The ovo, despite a number of bad reviews actually encouraged them to be active much, much more in comparison to the other two cages, My background research actually found that as well as obviously being attractive to kids, the tunnelling system and small compartments actually are set to mimick the kind of wild burrow system hamsters had back in the wild (I'm aware they haven't been wild for a long time now, but they still have wild instincts to a certain degree). They used their wheels much more, and spend a great deal of time generally moving through the various tunnels and compartments. We also saw a lot more "foraging"- in the previous cages the hamsters simply ate from their bowl, but in this case they would sneak out and carry their food off to a different compartment to hide it and they'd spend hours doing it. They also lost a lot of weight in the ovo cages- originally all of them were quite overweight for hamsters and very very fat, but even on the same diet their increased activity had an impact.

I thought it would be interesting to post this, obviously not in the awkward scientific way I had to originally present it, simply because there seems to be a lot of bad reviews for ovo set ups and generally, I found when used right it was really quite beneficial. Also, I've never met anyone who really appreciated the year and a half I spent staring at hamsters by night and recording every move they made and if anyone will appreciate it, it's people who actually like hamsters. My work actually was published internally at college and the hamsters there now live in their ovo set ups and are happy and healthy

There was probably more to it than I actually noted here, I just wanted to snip it down to something a little less laborious to read

[Pomegranate]

Originally Posted by MsCrumbyy

the tunnelling system and small compartments actually are set to mimick the kind of wild burrow system hamsters had back in the wild

The problem being, hamsters aren't in their burrow system all the time in the wild. No Habitrail extension I've seen mimics the open space above their burrow - I'd love to see them make one though!

[crazygal330]

This sounds quite interesting, however I strongly believe that for this kind of research it should really be about how you use the housing, more importantly than the housing itself. To start (I don't know which cages you used but)you would probably need the same amount of toys/exact same amount of floor space and as similar layouts as possible, for this to be a true representation of how they use the space. A small ferplast criteci9 compared to even the mini duna is an unfair comparison. And of course they are going to bar chew in such a small space. Also with the Ovo, there is little more than tunnels, and many rooms to run about in, so this is going to appear that it is what they are doing, but not neccesarily more so than they would if you supplied the same tunnels within a wire cage.
Also, people who have set ups of Hamster Heavens or similarly large wire style cages, with lots of shelves/ladders/toys would probably be seen to fit more into the description you have for hamsters in a duna set up, for example. I'm also pretty convinced that Ginger is pretty lazy despite being in a large duna type(zz1) with many toys and such.

pomegranate: I suppose you could attach a large bin cage to an ovo system? Though i would then probably be wondering to myself why I have frustrating tunnel tiny pod things taking up massive amounts of space when I already have a large bin cage. lol

[Pomegranate]

Originally Posted by crazygal330

pomegranate: I suppose you could attach a large bin cage to an ovo system? Though i would then probably be wondering to myself why I have frustrating tunnel tiny pod things taking up massive amounts of space when I already have a large bin cage. lol

Let's just say I won't be attaching Habitrail to Pudding's ZZ2 any time soon.

Good point on barred cages too - there's definitely good and bad ones out there, and once you've got the basic space sorted with a good-sized cage, it's more about the setup with toys and things.