Make sure you provide your hamster with toys and activities to keep them fit, healthy and happy. Many owners find their hamster will chew the bars or even try to escape – this is often a clear indication they’re bored and their environment is either not big or interesting enough.
Hamsters are known for sleeping lots – but when they’re awake, they want to be busy exploring, foraging and digging. The minimum cage size for a single or pair of dwarf hamsters: Chinese hamsters are a little more agile but still prefer longer rather than taller cages.įor all these breeds, make sure your chosen cage has minimum bar spacing as they can easily escape through seemingly smalls gaps. Large glass or plastic aquariums with well-ventilated lids are most suitable for these breeds. Roborovski and Russian hamsters are poor climbers due to being very lightweight and having little muscle tone, so they are best housed without high levels or tunnels placed at challenging angles. These hamsters need plenty of floor space to explore to keep them mentally and physically stimulated. The dwarf breeds (Winter White, Campbell, Roborovski and Chinese) can all be housed in a similar style of cage. They like to climb and roam around large areas, so the cage should have several levels and a large enough floor space to keep them active. Syrian hamsters should be housed in a large, mesh cage. The ideal cage design for a Syrian hamster: The cage you choose will need to enable you to add lots of activities for them to climb and explore, a floor space that they can do lots of running around on and bedding that they can dig and forage in. They need a much more interesting home than a small cage with a house and wheel. They’re very busy and will spend hours foraging for food and creating new territories and hides. These are often reclaimed aquariums, and thus are quite a good size, but it’s a good idea to get the measurements before you purchase any new home for your pet.Although they are small creatures, hamsters have bags of energy – particularly Syrian and Roborovski hamsters.
If none of these options work, then you may want to purchase a large glass cage that doesn’t have any bars. Your hamster may be trying to escape because their cage is too small - if they’re somewhere they don’t want to be, and there’s no obvious way out, then the obvious thing that they’ll try to do is attempt to gnaw their way out. This is a special piece of wood that is safe for your pet to munch on, and allows your pet a more comfortable, safer way of wearing down their teeth.įinally, if you’ve tried the above two options for a few days, then the problem may be the cage itself. A possible solution to this is to buy a hamster chew or gnaw. Hamsters have very long teeth that are constantly growing, and if they don’t have enough hard food to chew then they’ll gnaw whatever they can get their paws on - if there’s nothing else this can mean that your pet may resort to nibbling the bars of its own cage. Try increasing the frequency with which you play with your hamster for a while, and see if this reduces the bar-chewing behaviour.Īnother thing to try is to provide your hamster with something to chew. If your hamster is chewing its bars, then the first thing to do is bring it out of its cage for some play time. However, lots of owners recommend that they are brought out of their cage and played with at least once every 24 hours. Bar rub can be caused by a number of factorsįor the most part, your hamster will entertain themselves.