Cage Cleaning

[Almi]

So true, you guys. There is so much more to caring for a hamster than giving it a certain amount of cage space, or certain food, or certain toys; and I wholeheartedly agree that we should simply pay close attention to our hamsters. However, you are right in that the general population can easily miss cues given by a hamster.

What do you guys think are behaviors which suggest a hamster might need a larger cage? For example, AmityvilleHams said pacing, and I'll give another common one: bar-chewing, especially incessant bar-chewing. Maybe we need a thread: "how to tell if your hamster needs more space?" Or even, "how to find the right size cage for your hamster." Maybe threads like this already exist? I think it's definitely worth discussing, anyway.

Another point I wanted to make is that I think these "stress behaviors" (aka stereotypies) can be alleviated with things other than cage space. I wanted to explore that more in order to see how much of a difference cage space actually makes, and find out what is most important to a hamster. Which behaviors suggest a hamster is bored, and which behaviors suggest a hamster is cramped? Certainly, bigger is usually better - but how big do we really need to get in order to fulfill a small hamster?

As for leaving some bedding in the cage so the hamster has its own familiar scent, I pretty much do that too. I only spray and wipe out cages if it really needs it, and for the spray I just use vinegar. Otherwise, when I scoop bedding, I'll leave some remnants. I also don't wash furnishings and accessories unless they become heavily soiled (like if they get peed on). The hamsters often trade accessories; I think that's interesting and stimulating for them because the shifted around furniture has a lot of new smells on it when they get it; it's not "clean."


Some musings...the more comfortable I get with you guys, the more of these you will get:

Living in a cage is unnatural. Many of us live "unnatural" lives, and we adapt just the same. Best case scenario, a hamster would be free to roam wherever it wanted. Though, even in the wild, a hamster wouldn't be "free" to roam. (As a human, I certainly don't feel free to roam anywhere, except in my own house [cage].) There would be dangers such as predators, poisonous/inedible things, water to fall in. There would be a lot of stimulation and challenges and stress.

In a cage, we take those stimulating, unpredictable aspects away, and we give the hamster unlimited food, water, warmth, safety, and security. At a price: it is generally not free to make choices for itself beyond the walls of its cage. It no longer has to do much of anything or think about anything to survive. Living in a cage is interesting. In the wild, you're never alone. In a cage, you're always alone.

I have a little anecdote for you guys too. The other day, my daughter was holding our mice, and she accidentally let a few go in the basement. (I have a live trap coming in the mail so I don't have to catch any more escaped rodents by hand...) One of them was found crawling on my husband in bed (much to his dismay), and the other one was MIA. Several days after her disappearance, the same daughter who lost her came upstairs saying, "I found a mouse!"

The mouse was found in the most bizarre, open, high-traffic spot possible. She was trying to climb up the underside of the carpeted basement stairs, clinging to the carpet. I think she was trying to get to the mouse tank, which is on a table underneath the staircase. The edges of the stairs overhang right next to the tank. It seemed the mouse was more concerned with having her sisters, her warm nest, and unlimited food than having lots of free space.

It makes me wonder how hamsters feel about their cages. I wonder if/how living in a cage and essentially never having a purpose affects a hamster's psyche, or if they just kind of always live in the moment, blissfully unaware and without a care?

Maybe I think too much.

[AmityvilleHams]

I personally love the idea of more threads discussing such behaviors.It never hurts to have more and more up to date information.I don't think there's such a thing as being a complete expert though,as you can always learn and grow and to limit yourself is a terrible thing

Some people might get offended if you say something is unsafe or inappropriate or attempt debate,but this is never a negative thing and should be taken as yet another way to learn and grow.That being said,debates can turn bad if it goes too far and somebody makes it personal,but until that point debates are very healthy and beneficial!

I think mice are much different to hamsters,in the sense that they don't really need as much space,but we can certainly take certain things and apply them like limited open spaces.However,hamsters are very different when it comes to certain habitat requirements,and while they are rodents they're still quite different.

I find one of the most useful sources to figure out new hamster enrichment ideas and just understand more about natural hamster behavior to be looking deeper into German hamster care in general.While I can't say I would do every single thing the same way it would be likely to be done in Germany,there are things we can take from German hamster care like enrichment ideas as mentioned or substrate depth and cage size ideas and things like that.

[Almi]

Absolutely! I agree completely. I think I put people off sometimes because I talk and muse so much...do they think I'm some self-proclaimed expert on anything? I am only 28 years old, I am only beginning to understand this world, so I agree, why limit yourself? I think people also take a lot of writing/talking as arguing, disagreeing, or fighting. I just like to put stuff out there to induce thought so I can get other opinions and learn. You have no idea how liberating it is to not be slapped down AGAIN for wanting to question or discuss things on a forum. This is the age of information, why not share perspectives with each other? I'm pretty sure that's what forums are for, anyway.

Of course, mice are different than hamsters, but they are very closely related, and the story made me think. You know, I always assume that rodents probably don't want to be in cages. I realized that they probably don't conceptualize it like that; they don't think of it as being trapped in a cage. If they are trying to escape, it could be that their cage simply lacks what they want/need in the moment, not that they feel they are in jail and must escape. KWIM?

Maybe it's just in a hamster's nature to be a wanderer. A hamster isn't trying to escape because it's unhappy, it's just doing what is in its nature: explore as far as you can explore. So no matter how much space you give a hamster, the hamster is going to explore it and then want to explore more. Especially if the cage it is given - no matter how large - lacks what it wants or needs. I mean, we have to ask the question of WHY a hamster explores: what purpose does it serve for the hamster? What is it the hamster is looking for?

Have you heard about the scientific studies conducted (about 10 years ago?) on hamster cage size?

[AmityvilleHams]

I completely understand,having been shunned many times in so many places.I feel like in a lot of places and cultures you end up getting elitists of sorts who may have good intentions but are just so negative This isn't restricted to hamster communities though,you find it in alternative subcultures and schools,but it's honestly everywhere which is awful.

I find that the best solution is finding a balance between wandering and natural behaviors but also providing a large and enriching habitat.This is more difficult for Syrians than anything,but just about anyone could do so for the smaller species.

I've looked into cage size a lot,including German studies.I don't think I've heard of a dwarf study though,so what I did instead was to turn 1,550(the German minimum of square inches)into an equation.Essentially,1,550 divided by 6 and then make fractions using sixths and the length of the hamster in question and that becomes the amount of floor space which should be appropriate.Oddly enough,it ends up being around or slightly above minimums I've seen from Germany for Russian dwarf hamsters(100 cm x 50 cm)and the space robos and Chinese hamsters is often agreed upon(around 70 cm x 40 cm).

[Almi]

Yes. I always felt it was about an ego need to be right for some people. Like I was arguing with dogs who were only interested in marking their territory. I felt afraid to share myself or my pets, for fear of being annihilated since I wasn't following the "one right way." For me, I would just like to set judgments aside and have open-minded friends to talk to about things that matter to me. We can learn so much from each other. Enough about that though.

I think that's what I'm looking for here, is how to balance things like that. A lot of people seem to think that if you get your hamster a huge cage and put some hamster-y stuff in it, then the rest will fall into place and the hamster will be happy. Almost as though the size of the cage is the be-all, end-all of hamster care. Certainly it is a large component, and a certain amount of space is required for well-being, but I am of the stance that how you set up the environment and what you offer the hamster is more important (or at least just as important) than how far apart their walls are. I think using math is a good guideline, but the older I get, the more math seems totally useless to me in accurately assessing a situation as a whole.

That's one thing I don't like about scientific experiments: the variable is the only thing you're studying. It doesn't look at the whole picture. One thing I noted in those cage size experiments was that, no matter the cage size, the hamsters still tried to escape. That tells me that the problem probably isn't cage space. I was actually more intrigued by the deep bedding studies they did. In those circumstances, the hamsters were almost never seen trying to escape. They felt safe; they felt at home. ...And I think there are other ways besides deep substrate to make a hamster feel safe and at home, too.

So, about that study done on bedding depth that I read. In the wild, they found that the average burrow depth was between 7 and 26 inches. In captivity, the hamsters chose to burrow somewhere in between. A person might say that they -need- to be able to burrow that deep, but I disagree. I think a hamster just adapts to its environment and simply does whatever it feels is necessary. In a cage, a hamster doesn't need a deep burrow to get away from predators, so they're just burrowing as far as they can...because they can. In the wild, they have to burrow in order to survive. On the other hand, maybe burrow depth would depend on the hamster. For example, a pregnant female might make a deep, permanent nest and a male might only bother making a shallow, temporary one. Burrow depth could certainly depend on the personality of a hamster and how they're feeling at the time.

There does seem to be a huge difference between Syrians and the other species, and you are right, the problem does seem to be with Syrians. Dwarfs seem easy to please, tend to live more like mice, and want to stay close to or in the burrow. Syrians often seem totally insatiable. Though, one thing I noticed with two of my Syrians is that they seem to just relish coming out of the cage and getting attention. When they were younger, they didn't seem to care as much; they seemed more unsatisfied. My third Syrian is a very insatiable female, she is a chewer, a digger, and she doesn't like to be touched.

I think it would be interesting to look at (maybe start a thread about) hamster behavior in the wild, especially when comparing the species. We have to think about their niche in the world: what they're supposed to be doing and would choose to do in their natural environment. A hamster species that is solitary will have different habits than one who is communal. A species that makes deep, permanent burrows is likely to have different habits and needs than a species who has shallow, temporary burrows. For example, one might move (migrate) around a lot, and another might stay in the same area for its entire life.

I'm going to use other species as an example again: voles. I have a colony of voles from my garden compost heap. We were lucky enough to happen to capture a male and a female at about 6 weeks of age, and now we have 15-20 of them between two large tanks. The heap outside is about 10 x 10 feet if I had to guess, and the voles never leave. They obviously have deep burrows, and they have to, because the humans are always around the garden doing yardwork, turning the compost heap, and adding more.

Inside, I noticed something interesting. They don't ever burrow to the bottom of the tank. They are more concerned with burrowing exactly in the middle point of the substrate. Halfway up, halfway down. They don't seem to care how deep it is, as long as they have enough substrate to construct a burrow. They just do whatever makes sense. They also don't ever try to escape, as long as they have what they need right in front of them. Which, voles seem to have simple values: water/food/heat, stuff to chew on/excavate, and family.

I also noticed that these burrowing animals (and voles are very much so) don't like open spaces. They want to continually be hugged by their tunnels, they live almost exclusively in tunnels, and there is basically no such thing as a "room" in a vole burrow. Only tunnels. Because of this, they very highly value having chewable/edible obstacles throughout the substrate. Space doesn't seem to matter to them, as long as there is enough space and resources for them to be able to carry out a normal vole life. Even though they might choose to occupy a 10 x 10 foot square compost heap in the wild, that doesn't mean that is absolutely what they need to live. I think it's the same for hamsters; they don't have a concept of space, it's about what they're doing in the space.

One more thing I feel is something we never look at is the fact that our hamsters have sex drives. They're rodents, nature's food animal: their life purpose is to reproduce, so it's probably quite fulfilling for them to do so. I've noticed that hamsters seem happier in their cages if they're raising a family. Not that we can give every hamster that, but it is something we don't really seem to consider. One of my Syrians right now is a hamster I allowed to have babies. She seemed to just...calm down and feel right afterwards. I swear the male did, too. I had never really thought about it before. Maybe some hamsters just want some oxytocin?

This made me think of rabbits too, they are pretty obvious about what they want out of life, and as prey, actually seem to enjoy being chased. Lol. Sorry for the long post, I'm sure it's tiring to read. I am just so thankful that this is a safe place to chat. There are so many things I want to talk about.

[Pebbles82]

This is a fascinating thread In the first few months we had our Syrian I also had lots of questions and thoughts about such things - watching their behaviour, wondering what made them tick and so on.

The hamsters we own are born in captivity and have never known the wild - but they still have some inbuilt natural instincts - to forage for food and nesting material (even when it's provided in a bowl and a cage), to keep undercover (they are prey animals) and to be awake at night. Just as humans still get a nesting instinct and revert to caveman behaviour sometimes lol.

My conclusion was they are fascinating little creatures. Partly "programmed" to almost mindlessly do hamstery things, partly intelligent, curious and with memories and feelings and the ability to suss people out. And partly stupid sometimes lol. Like lemmings. In fact a bit like humans to some degree ha ha.

If you give a hamster a whole room, it will run around and climb and explore the whole room - and usually try and find a dark corner or tunnel to go in or under - to feel safe, at some point. I think the urge to explore is related to their biological need to travel, roam and forage for food and nesting materials. They were built to travel long distances and run fast. Your anecdote about the mice wanting to get back to their tank though, suggests to me that - they like the open space to roam but also like to go back to the "burrow" and bed and food and feel safe and secure and have familiarity. And a rodent that is used to having the security of a cage or tank and developing habits in it, will want that familiarity. But it could well be that the cage or tank is just their "burrow". And they want to go back to bed

It is unnatural for them to live in cages, and they can do so happily I think, but need to get out of them as well and have plenty of exercise - a wheel isn't enough.

There can be some quite passionate and heated debates about cage size. I don't know about peoples' egos, but I think it is also a case of people passionately wanting to have things the best for their hammies sometimes - and having different opinions on what is ok/best.

My own conclusion is they need as much space as you can give them in a "habitat" or cage - but as you say - a big empty tank or cage isn't enrichment. It needs to be a kind of habitat with different levels and textures. But also the space needs plenty of "cover" in my opinion. Observing our hamster in a room, he will generally "wall hug" as mice do, or head for the darkest little gap (like under the sofa or behind something) - to feel safe so they can't be attacked from above. In a very large cage they must feel this too.

So a hamster in a very large cage with no shelves or much overhead, and very little substrate, has nowhere to hide - so they build a pile of nesting material in a corner and don't come out of it much. There isn't much to explore or forage because it's all the same.

A hamster in a big open cage with 30cm of substrate will probably dig tunnels and make an underground burrow - because that is their overhead cover and there's nothing on the floor of the cage to hide in or stimulate them.

A hamster with 15cm of substrate, shelves, lots of hidey places and a large house/nesting box, may not feel the need to burrow and make an underground hide, because they have a nice big dark hide (their house) and there is lots of enrichment in the cage to stimulate them - places to go, things to do and new bits of food to find that have been hidden or scattered.

Putting their food and bedding out is a bit like "hamsters on the dole" ie maybe they have less incentive to get out there and forage for things. But they still seem to get a bit excited when they find something new that might do for a nest, or find hidden food.

I think one problem of them living as pets, in cages, is they do tend to develop arthritis, especially in their back legs - because they were designed to run long distances and aren't getting the use they should be. On the other hand, they are usually quite old when they develop it and it is a normal part of ageing for things to deteriorate.

And it's why a wheel is so important - and so they can run a lot in a comfortable, safe position, not at a strange angle or bent in the middle. But a wheel doesn't compensate for enough space. Because it is more than just running - it is also the need to live life maybe. To be stimulated and feel they have a purpose! Their purpose being to forage and nest and hoard supplies. So they need the enrichment to enjoy life and be productive I think. It's generally accepted that enrichment is the key. Whatever the size of the cage.

My own feeling is they need a lot of space - at night. Which is when they are in their cages and it is their most active time - it's not safe to let them free roam when we're asleep! And they need things to do in there. Scatter feeding a bit can give them things to do at night. And they can come out and feel safer and go and sit in favourite places or hides. In fact I would love to have an all night film of what our hamster does all night! Staying up to watch doesn't work, because they know you're there and do different things, or don't come out of the house sometimes. I know our hamster won't use his wheel at night until I've left the room, even if it's 3am.

What is also fascinating is how their personality seems to change at night, like a little switch has been flicked and they become wild, roaming hamster, glazed eyes, focused on their mission. Instead of the daytime hamster who interacts. I think of it as them being your buddy and tame pet during human hours, and being themselves at night A bit of mental space for them to just be a hamster.

To me it was fairly obvious, getting to know our Hamster, what caused him stress - and that was "being invaded" - his nest or hoard being messed with and strange scents in his cage - that might mean a predator was nearby or someone had just transported him to a new environment!

A common analogy on here used to be - imagine how you would feel if you got home from work and found someone had moved all your furniture round, decorated the room and taken the sheets off your bed! You might partly think - oh that looks better - but you would feel stressed that someone had invaded your privacy and home and changed things without your permission and made everything smell different and even worse not done it how you would have done it!

I once didn't clean out in Charlie's house/nesting box for quite a long time. So he did it himself. I came down to find a big pile of stinky substrate and pee'd on food piled up against the cage door, and a big hole in the substrate down to the floor of the cage, where he had taken all the substrate away and into his house to replace the stinky stuff. So I think they are naturally quite busy little housekeepers but get a bit lazy when we do it for them And they have their solitary times and don't like to be disturbed.

So going back to the need to go back to the cage after being out in a house - my opinion is that a large cage is their habitat, and a house/nesting box is their burrow. A hamster in a small cage usually wants to get out more than a hamster in a large cage. Maybe the environment is enough in a larger cage - and then out of cage time is a bonus. But that environment needs to be somewhere a hamster likes exploring - with hidy places, places to dig and bury things, places to forage and roam.

I remember putting a vine branch in Charlie's cage in the early days - so he could get up to the far side of his sputnik and also had something to sit under. I could always tell if he approved of something or not by his reaction. If he didn't like it he'd go bonkers and stressy and give me black looks, avoid the offending item or tip it up. If he liked it he'd use it straight away and have a kind of contented look. He liked and approved of the vine branch and straight away walked up it and laid down at the top looking out of the cage as it it was a look-out post.

This photo was taken the night it went in So he hated changes in the cage and things being moved, but the occasional addition that improved things was accepted.

Having said all that, to me a large cage is an ideal. Not necessarily an absolute necessity. People who have a lot of hamsters, or breed them may not have the space for a lot of huge cages, and have hamsters who are perfectly happy in cages that aren't huge. But common sense says that any animal in a cage the size of a pet carrier is going to feel stressed and trapped.

[Pebbles82]

With regard to cleaning. I find the substrate change is accepted if some of it still smells familiar and if I leave the house (nest, hoard, toilet etc) to do at a different time. So they have something familiar to retreat to and the toys still smell the same. It's not so traumatic as everything losing scent all at the same time.

[flowerfairy]

I do the same as Serendipity.

[Almi]

Serendipity, thank you for the wonderful, insightful post! I absolutely loved reading it.

You say that hamsters have some human-like qualities, and I think they do too. They certainly do have qualities that they share with us (all creatures do), and though things are much simpler and a different perspective for a hamster, I think they feel fulfilled by many of the same things, too. At least, I like to think so when I try to empathize with them.

I think one interesting thing to look at is the relationship of the hamster with the caregiver(s). A hamster is likely to be much less stressed, hide less, etc. if they know their humans and aren't afraid of them. Likewise, an attentive caregiver who is able to spend time with the hamster will be able to be more sensitive to the hamster's individual needs. That's one thing I didn't like about the cage size experiments. The hamsters didn't have any real relationship with their caregivers.

If you have a good relationship with your hamster, you are more likely to spend time with it outside of its cage, giving it stimulation. If the hamster isn't afraid, it would greatly enjoy time outside of its cage. So I think it's not a bad thing to be persistent in taming a hamster. It's one reason I used a small wire cage set up in a high traffic area in order to bond with our new dwarfs when we got them. I wanted them to have just enough to feel safe, but not so much that they could hide from us all the time. In this way I kind of "forced" them to get used to us. It was also a good way to teach my children how to call a hamster out of its nest, instead of messing up the cage to find the hamster.

I like the thought of always leaving part of the cage intact, especially the nest, for some familiarity. That's a good idea. And you know, I noticed that my hamsters will sometimes clean out their own nest or bathroom too. It doesn't surprise me, though - they're just doing whatever needs to be done! The first time I really witnessed that was when I had a fairly elaborate setup for a Syrian in a 55 gallon tank. (I used the plastic coated wire racks I posted in another thread somewhere, sorry.) I'll try to find you a pic. Speaking of this setup, I recall after setting it up one of my kids saying they wish they could be a hamster in there! She has said it for a lot of setups. This is the daughter whom I speak of often - she says she loves animals more than people.

That would be very interesting to videotape our hamsters at night. I do have a device that could probably do that, at least for a few hours I imagine. Even more interesting, a hamster forum could potentially do their own experiments and collect data. Have you guys ever considered doing something like that? It would be so much better and more realistic than doing a lab experiment...and we wouldn't euthanize and gut the hamsters once they turned three months old.

I feel like a bunch of hamsters died just so someone could "prove" that bigger cages are better, but all the same, these hamster cage studies were interesting. The more variables they added, the more they seemed to find out that cage space wasn't necessarily the issue. Since I can't get them out of my head, I might as well post them so you guys know what I'm talking about.

Cage size study
Cage size + enrichment
Hamster wheel study
Deep bedding study
Deep bedding study 2

Also, here's a blog someone made based on the findings. They say, "Many researchers have come to the conclusion that hamsters should not be kept as pets because they can not be offered the right conditions."

[Pebbles82]

Hi! Yes I've seen those German studies and the Hamsterhege blog - in fact the owner who wrote it used to be a member on here I think (maybe still is!)

Yes it does make for some gruesome reading and like you I also thought it didn't allow for human bonding - another thing someone else commented was if the hamsters were all genetically related that would affect their predisposition to bar chew possibly. It is all a bit clinical - but they did show I think that the more space they had the less they bar chewed. I think at one point they thought hamsters shouldn't be kept as pets but that the conclusion in the end was they could be if they had a metre square cage. (Can't remember where that info is). Which I think is where the German recommended minimum cage size of 1 metre square came from. Although the German welfare minimum recommended is 100cm by 50cm (about a 50 gallon tank size?)

Without the element of human bonding, the experiment is talking about untamed hamsters basically. And a hamster bonded with a human can be happy in something smaller than 1 metre square as many owners find. (This is all Syrians as well I believe, not relating to dwarf hamsters).

As you say, a good owner who spends time with their hamster/s and has gained trust and gives them out of cage time, is not quantifiable in the experiment and adds to the hamster's enrichment - so it isn't just cage size.

On the other hand there are many many people who have hamsters who are not particularly thoughtful owners or spend time with them or tame them - and it is those owners who, in my opinion, need to give their hamsters a big cage. Unfortunately it is those owners who usually buy the small cages that are so easy to find.

Anyway having said all that - our Syrian bonded and was tamed and had out of cage time each night and lots of attention. But he still needed a certain amount of cage space to feel happy in, in my opinion. And I still stick by the 80cm by 50cm minimum for a Syrian with 100cm by 50cm being a good size for them (as in not likely to need to upgrade again).

As to experiments - I think someone did an experiment with wheel running a few years back! With a speedometer or something

And there have been occasional night videos I think Velma may have done an all night one and speeded it up (was it Hector the Robo?)

I never quite got round to doing it myself or working out how to do it!