New Cage?

[amyyxj]

So Doris is always trying to escape. She's corner digging and chewing the perspex + now starting to chew the wood the cage is made from. She has the living world eco habitat and its nearly 100cm long but she doesn't seem satisfied. So I'm thinking about getting the detolf. I've spent so much money on her already though. I'm only 14 and my mum says to just get a cage with bars but I want to provide her with a bigger space than that.

There isn't an ikea near me so I'd need to pay £30 for shipping along with the detolf + something to stand it on. There is also the problem of making the lid, i'm not exactly handy and neither are my parents so if anyone has any tutorials on the lid that would be great.

I do have enough money so I hope she will like a detolf because I can't afford to invest in anything else for her. I've done everything I possibly can to make her stop chewing and give her enrichment so this is my last resort.

She really is a problematic hamster and quite a high maintenance little thing bless her. Hopefully she will enjoy a detolf. She is just a baby so maybe she will grow out of her mad chewing shenanigans.

Please help!

[Drago]

Oh my you certainly have your hands full! I think a detolf sounds like a good idea, especially since it's not made of wood so it may help discourage the chewing more. Lids are fairly simple to make, go to a local hardware store and pick up mesh and simply cut to size, I'll add a link below to help you out! Baby hams have a tendency to be naughty little critters and that could be the source of her crazed behavior. If after upgrading her, she continues trying to escape and chew, let her grow up a bit before deciding to make another cage upgrade. Hope things settle down for you two and she breaks this nasty habit

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B01...sed+steel+mesh

Here's an example of mesh you should get, make sure to have the spacing 1/4 to 1/2 an inch at most

[Pebbles82]

Hmm naughty Doris. It does sound like she's a chewer. My only concern with a detolf would be - the end panels are wood and can be chewed and some chewy hamsters also chew the inner bars.

Do you have a photo of your set up? There might be some adjustments that could help her settle in the Eco Habitat. Sometimes they chew because something isn't right for them in the cage. One suggestion I'd make for a cage/habitat like that would be to have really deep substrate. And maybe a partly submerged house so it feels like a burrow - then she can dig tunnels and have lots of things to do (you can part bury tunnels in the substrate). To distract her from chewing - plus the base and corners would be more out of sight.

So if the substrate maybe isn't that deep and she feels a bit exposed from above (eg if there's no platform to sit under or her house isn't very big) then the chewing could just be because she doesn't feel quite right in there and is trying to get out.

This one is set up for gerbils but you get the idea - lots of substrate, some part buried tunnels and a shelf to climb onto or sit under.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6UF9OKeE3c

On the zooplus photos page, if you scroll down and look at the two pushed together at the bottom of the photos page - that has some good ideas for lots of large floor cover toys like large tunnels, platforms and houses and hidey places (although the substrate isn't very deep on that one - which would make it even better!)

Living World Green Eco Habitat | Free P&P on orders £29+ at zooplus!

Although it would take up a lot of substrate to fill it 25cm deep say, you would hardly ever need to do a big clean. With that much substrate you can just spot clean occasionally and only need to do a big clean maybe every 3 months or more. If your hammy uses a litter tray or pees in a sandbath then most of the cage would stay dry anyway. Even then you'd only need to replace about a third of the substrate each time you did a "big clean" as most would stay clean and dry - especially near the bottom.

This Trixie platform is quite good for tank style cages and deeper substrate (it's quite tall).

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trixie-Natu...living+shelter

A bendy bridge or some other kind of ladder up to it would be needed. And a large house pushed down into the substrate with a tube or tunnel leading down to the entrance is usually liked by hammies.

I have a feeling she maybe can't just settle in it, and a few changes could help her. If you've been cleaning out regularly that will stress her as well and make her want to escape maybe.

[AmityvilleHams]

Maybe a bin setup with several bins directly connected instead?You could get more floor space than the Detolf and while it would have some initial investments these initial investments are not just for the first bin setup you ever make.Those initial investments,if used wisely,will last several cages and therefore make it in some ways a better value than even a Detolf.Unless you make a bin setup expensive,they are very cheap for the potential floor space.

[CMB]

A detolf is long but quite narrow. YouTube has detolf diy lid tutorials for a hamster cage.

There are other tutorials on diy cages that are also good. A lot of these are made from ikea furniture. You could also build a similar style cage to your own dimensions by buying wood panels, glass/ acrylic so it would fit in an existing space in your house/room.

If you have a playpen that she can't escape from you could surround her cage and give her access to it most of the time (with supervision and lots of toys etc) Hope she settles down soon.

[Hamsterita]

I think that 100 cm long is a good size, and yes, sometimes they need more space, but as far as I know, it could be that the set up isn't right, so before you buy another cage, maybe you could try to add more things to her cage and distract her from chewing. Actually you don't need to buy toys and spend more money, add loo roll tubes, or egg cases, maybe deeper substrate...

If that doesn't work you'll need a bigger cage, but I think that it's worth it to try to improve what she already has. It's so important the size as the enrichment.

And if she needs another cage I'll look into glass tanks (maybe you can do one yourself with glass panels and silicone). They can chew the sealant anyway, but it's harder for them to find things to chew

[DrropS]

My hamster is exactly same, she is a little wild trouble maker, waiting her to grow up a bit and hopefully she will stop her behaviour.

What I changed recently is that I filled as much as possible bedding which helped maybe a tiny bit. What I am trying to do is always stop her and move her away from the corners when she is chewing there, since she is even chewing melamine, I'm scared she will get her way out from the cage one day, since she used to be good at escaping, but I changed her cage and she cant get out of there at least not at the moment.

Also one thing I did is that I bought wheemzees (sorry I'm not sure how its spelled exactly) and she likes to chew them a lot

Otherwise I havent found any kind of solution, waiting few more months to pass and see if she will leave this behaviour or will she be like this rest of her life
I don't know if a new cage will help, I've tried 3 cages already, but you can always try.

[Fluffagrams]

It is my understanding that sometimes chewing is not connected with boredom or the size of the cage at all and there's several reasons why a hamster might chew.

On two occasions when I had to deal with a chewer, it was actually caused by something outside the cage that was bothering them and this behaviour included the corner digging that you describe. Is your hamster's food or treats stored anywhere near the cage or is there another hamster in the immediate vicinity? In one of the incidences with one of mine, just putting her cage above her neighbour's fixed the problem.

Have you added any more toys or changed the layout? Sometimes this can annoy them and because we can't speak hamster, they need to let you know in some other way and this can include chewing things you'd rather they didn't.

Some hamsters will chew because they're little attention seekers and others will chew just because they can so there's no guarantees that a new cage will address the issues but you don't alway know until you try.

[amyyxj]

I'm actually going away for 4 days at the end of March and I would really like her problems to have been solved by then. Yesterday she had decided to pile up her bedding in one side of her cage and knock over her wheel, she did this during the day. Someone will check on her once during the time I am gone but I'll probably be worried all the time.

As for things outside of the cage I don't think there is anything that would disturb her, my brothers hamster stayed in my room for a while but that's it. She keeps damaging her cage and even if she does chew all the wood still don't think there is a way for her to get out but its still not good.

As I've said before, I've changed the setup a few times to get her to stop and provided her with lots of toys. Blocking off the area doesn't work either. I can't tell whether she's doing it for attention or not. She is constantly trying to escape. My brothers hamster who is in the same cage as Doris (two separate cages that are the same make of course), is the total opposite.

I'm going off the detolf a little as she will most definitely chew the bars and tanks are a little too expensive for me at the moment. I'm adding more bedding and trying to block off her chew spots again today so I guess I'll just see how that goes.

[cypher]

Piling substrate up & moving things around is quite normal behaviour really, some females (more often than males) are high maintenance & needs loads to do, is there anyway you could hang the wheel from the top of the tank to at least keep that in place?
Does she have much out of cage time?