Bar biting and cage set up
Hi - this has turned into quite a long post sorry!
My hamster is about 4 months old. She was absolutely tiny when I got her, and was quite shy and reserved and didn't like open spaces. Because of this I kept her in a smaller cage that I'd been meaning to replace, and she was fine until about two weeks ago - as she got tamer and more confident she also has become obsessed with getting into the back corner of the cage and chewing the bars.
I've struggled to find a bigger cage, but I managed to get a secondhand Alaska and she moved in last week. I put a house in front of the back corner she'd been obsessed with in the last cage. She explored for a day, and then squeezed her way into the back corner and started biting the bars again.
I've attached a picture of her cage - she's got a big bendy bridge as a house, a ferplast guinea pig house, a straw box, a willow tunnel, a hay tunnel, a cardboard box, two smaller platforms with a bendy bridge, a sputnik, a large platform, sandbath, two working wheels which she can run straight in, loads of chews either attached to the bars or loose, a drinker, a working bottle drinker a treat puzzle, and she's scatter fed with a bowl for snacks. She comes out for some out of cage time either in a playpen or on the sofa every night.
She ignores pretty much everything apart from one wheel, her bridge, sandbath, and the bars! She'll chew anything stuck through the bars from the outside, like a toilet roll, in the place she like to gnaw, but not a chew attached to the inside of the bars.
We're going to try lining the back wall with something next, but previously she's just moved elsewhere.
Is she just not a bar cage hamster or is something wrong with her setup?
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance.
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