To those who've successfully housed a pair/group of hybrids...

genevieve · 04-22-2011, 09:31 AM

To those who've successfully housed a pair/group of hybrid hamsters (as in, not had to separate due to fighting), I have a few questions for you

How many did you house together?
Where did you get them from? (eg. pet shop, breeder, shelter etc)
When were they introduced? Or were they together from birth?
If they weren't together when you got them, how were they introduced? (eg. vanilla method, split cage method etc)
How big was their cage?
How many wheels did they have?
Did you use a food bowl, or did you scatter food?
How many water bottles did they have?
How many "houses" / "hideouts" did they have?
What other stimulative items (eg. toys, sand bath etc) did they have in their home, and how many of each?
How long did they live together before one/both/all passed away?
Did they ever have to be temporarily separated for any reason? (eg. illness)
How often did they play fight, and did it ever look serious?
Do you think they got along well?
Would you every house a pair/group again? Why/why not?

Thanks to all who answer, this will be a huge help!

genevieve · 06-12-2011, 02:42 AM

Take it no one has then? :P

KatiePillow · 06-12-2011, 03:36 AM

My boy and girl lived together happily but I had to seperate them due to being different genders

so can't really contribute since it was only when they were young anyway

dan_parsons · 06-21-2011, 01:58 PM

bumping this up for you as im interested in this too!

you might get more results if you put this in chat?

**kyrilliondaemon** · 07-07-2011, 09:15 AM

We're looking into getting some who we're assuming are hybrids unless proven otherwise (the local petshop didn't know last time I asked...) and this is er... not reassuring lol
Will update you if we do get them and they end up fine together though.

**kyrilliondaemon** · 07-24-2011, 02:09 PM

Just to update this a bit. We've got some now and while we've yet to check and confirm their status as hybrids they seem to be doing well together. We got two, found them unhappy away from their littermates and had bought the other two within 24 hours to see if we could successfully reintroduce them after such a short time apart (if we'd taken longer to realise the boys were unhappy we'd never have tried a reintroduction). Did make sure we could manage an extra cage before we bought the second pair though, since we knew there were no guarantees the boys'd accept each other back.
We put the carry case containing the newer two into a big box the others hadn't even seen before, put the two we got first into the box in their food bowl (then both groups had somewhere they did know a bit) and opened the carry case.
The reintroductions went fantastically, they were all thrilled to be reunited and the boys have been much happier since.
We've since realised that the pair we chose was an unfortunate pairing of one of the independant boys and the one who cares most about knowing where the others are. Wasn't really a great idea and having all four is working really well, they routinely sleep in a heap together and have taken great pleasure in setting up about six different beds in their cage. When the boys are asleep we usually find that at least two are sleeping together, and who it is can vary a lot. We've also found every other possible combination of pairs/trios sleeping together, and we often see them sharing things, even when they don't need to. (We've also got one who seems to love waking the others up by climbing over them, and they all take that fine too lol)

The original questions.

We're housing four together.
Got them from the pet shop.
We don't know if they were together from birth or introduced by 5-6 weeks when the pet shop would have got them.
The cage is approximately 85cm by 75cm, its also about 30cm deep.
They've got four flying saucers at the moment.
We're using a rabbit sized food bowl, but are prepared to remove it if neccessary.
They've got four water bottles.
They've got four plastic houses (same shape and size), and one made from a cardboard box (we're also prepared to remove that if neccessary).
They've got a lot of toys, but four of each, and only one sand bath at the moment, but we're prepared to place more (identical ones) in the cage if needed.

They're only about 12 weeks so I can't guarantee they'll stay together but thought I'd let you know what we've got so far. They've been separated for 24 hours due to buying two and then getting the rest of the litter when they seemed unhappy about the separation. We haven't seen them play fighting yet and we're confident they get along well, partially because of they got distressed about the separation, partially because they spend so much time sleeping together and sharing things when awake.
If this goes as well as we hope, I see no reason to avoid them in the future, but we're not planning that far ahead now. We hope to have this lot for a while yet anyway

Gillzy · 07-24-2011, 02:12 PM

Aw sounds wonderful! Would love to see pics of your four dwarfy boys together!!

**kyrilliondaemon** · 07-30-2011, 08:48 AM

I keep meaning to take some, just haven't got around to it yet.
I'll definetly post them somewhere when I take them though

Last time I saw the boys two were asleep in different beds but near each other, and two were awake and in the sand bath together, then I got to watch them both go off to bed - They both went to a different bed and woke up the hamster sleeping in it, before all four settled down to sleep in pairs

Oh and they've now got about seven beds as far as we can count lol, they made another yesterday, apparently the previous six just wasn't enough...
I think they use each other as bedding, some of the beds are fairly empty and those are the ones most likely to have all four of them in lol

starrylight99 · 07-30-2011, 09:03 AM

1) How many did you house together? 2, they were brothers
2) Where did you get them from? (eg. pet shop, breeder, shelter etc) Humane society
3) When were they introduced? Or were they together from birth? together from birth
4) If they weren't together when you got them, how were they introduced? (eg. vanilla method, split cage method etc)
5) How big was their cage? 24"Lx15"W
6) How many wheels did they have? 2
7) Did you use a food bowl, or did you scatter food? both

How many water bottles did they have? 2
9) How many "houses" / "hideouts" did they have? 3
10) What other stimulative items (eg. toys, sand bath etc) did they have in their home, and how many of each? Play house that doubled as a hideout, sand bath
11) How long did they live together before one/both/all passed away? 6 months
12) Did they ever have to be temporarily separated for any reason? (eg. illness) yes, they were separated for 6 weeks while Apples was recovering from a URI. We didn't try re-introducing them after that because they seemed to love having their own space
13) How often did they play fight, and did it ever look serious? not too often, maybe once or twice that we saw, but it never looked serious
14) Do you think they got along well? honestly, they never really paid much attention to one another. they slept separately and would only cuddle every once in a while. usually they ignored each other
15) Would you every house a pair/group again? Why/why not? yes, but only if I could find a cage that was a bit larger. theirs was a bit cramped since it needed 2 of everything.

**kyrilliondaemon** · 09-25-2011, 08:11 AM

Our boys have grown up a bit now and I decided to return to update this again.
They're nearly five months old now and we've worked out that they're almost definetly not blood relatives, and we're not entirely sure the pet shop was right about the sex either, so I'm going to check if they're male or female properly one day, am just waiting to make sure they're fully developed first.

We've also changed the cage layout a few times, and Scruff went through a phase of being a silly territorial hamster, kept disagreeing with Bump over things, so we removed anything he was being daft about and gave them an extra food bowl, as well as a bigger sand bath. Whenever he started to fight we moved both him and Bump away from the item in question and kept them away from each other for a few minutes. They never caused any visible injuries so we're not sure it was anything more than play-fighting but since they were squeaking we decided to be overly-careful rather than risk not being careful enough.
After a week or two he calmed down and now everyone is getting along great again. We've given them an extra food bowl and a bigger sand bath just for the sake of it, as well as two extra water bottles (so they're on six now) because we heard two of them arguing over who got to drink from a specific bottle one day.

Er... Scruff still objects if someone (usually Timmy) tries to help themselves to food he's moved out of a bowl, but they just settle it with a few nudges and squeaks. They're all also a bit more independant but they seem happy, and do still run together in their wheels and seem to enjoy saying hello to each other a few times a day. They do still sleep together sometimes

The pic shows an old cage layout. Scruff is the white blur, Timmy the cream and white, and I think the visible agouti one is Dusty, which means Bump was hiding when I took the photo. The most important change is that we replaced the flying saucers with silent spinners, but there've also been a few other changes in the cage since. This pic is there mostly to show the size of it and the sort of toys they have.