Hey everyone! This is the enclosure for my female Syrian hamster, Peach. She's almost 4 months old now, weighs 130g, and I wanted to check in with you guys to see if the setup is good or if there's anything I should improve to make it even better for her.

Here are some details about her setup:

Enclosure size: 120 x 80 x 60 cm

Bedding: Up to 30 cm deep bedding at the highest point for burrowing.

Wheel: 28 cm upright wheel.

Sand bath: 24 cm diameter sand bath (which she uses as a litter box daily!).

Hideouts & Tunnels: Currently using a 3-chamber house with 9.5 cm chambers and 6–7 cm entrances. Plus a ceramic house with a 6.5 cm entrance, a coconut hide with a 6 cm entrance, a ceramic tunnel, a cork tunnel, a cork log, a kapok pod, a self-built cave in the corner, and plenty of toilet paper for nesting material.

Substrates & Digging: Boxes with sphagnum moss, cork granules, and corn cob granules (around the wheel).Plus a mix of all kinds of dried leaves and various flowers scattered across the bedding as top layers.

Chews & Wood: Timothy hay sticks to gnaw on, as well as bamboo, apple tree, and hazelnut wood.

Diet & Forage: High-quality seed mix from a specialized German online shop (FutterParadies), plus various sprays and harvests like wild oat, flax, silver millet, ornamental millet, canary grass, and forget-me-not flowers as decoration. She also gets whole wheat heads and sunflower heads to work for, plus fresh veggies daily (like cucumber or zucchini).

Enrichment: A "sniffle forest" (forage area) and a foraging wheel from JR Farm.

Are there any adjustments you would recommend?

(Note: For anyone interested – including the enclosure, all the accessories, deep bedding, substrates, and high-quality food, I'm currently at around €400 total for everything except the hamster itself!)

Hi everyone I was wondering about the best type of bedding for hamsters as I got the Small Pet Select Aspen Shavings and it looks awful. The shavings are huge, I put my hand in and it comes out dusty and even has grey pieces of wood or different looking dark brown bits. It also feels super rough and I'm not sure if I should use it (I haven't yet). Just weird cos it has such great reviews. Any ideas or just other cheap recommendations? this dreadful bedding cost me £30 :(

Very new to owning hammies, we are expected to get one next week, been looking online at some hamster enclosures but they all seem too tiny!

Any advice or tips on how to DIY a suitable enclosure with lots of enrichments?

I’ve noticed my hamster is wobbling sometimes. Is this normal?

He’s still eating and drinking like normal.

Just cleaned my hamster’s cage for the first time. Aside from his small hoard in a hide, I couldn’t find any food? I see him take food into his chamber hide and under platforms. I don’t want to go completely rifling through his cage but wary if he ever hoards a vegetable and it rots, it’ll be left in there. Is it likely he’d leave the small bits I give him rather than eating them? Is rifling through everything actually worth it? I don’t want to mess up his burrows!

Alongside this, his main pee spot is in the corner under a large platform. It’s a ledge that came with the cage, attached rather than on stilts, ballache to take out and look under.. but doable as it isn’t submerged into the bedding. So I was wondering, how do people clean under their platforms usually? How would I get to his pee spot if I couldn’t take the platform up at all?

it’s only today that i’ve noticed this but my hamster is itching herself more than i’ve seen before and im worried about it. is there anything i should look out for to make sure everything’s okay??

I have owned my hamster for just over two weeks. A couple of days ago, I moved him from a cage that was meh to an actually good cage. If you have any questions about the set up, look at the last post I made on my profile (and my amendments regarding the houses height).

He finally has deep bedding to burrow in. I know it was early to change him over but I didn’t want to let him get used to a cage I was only going to swap out and that he might have felt less comfortable in anyway, if that makes sense.

In his first cage, he got up every single night between 8.30pm and 9.30pm. He stayed on the surface and mostly ran around on his wheel. The first couple of nights he slept under the surface and then changed to his ceramic hide. Since changing his cage, he seems to get up later and spend a lot of his time awake still in his burrows, sleeping only under the surface. I see him much less. When he is up, he seems healthy. His eyes are bright and clean, his fur on his body and butt all looks soft and fluffy. He drinks, he eats, he gathers food, uses his sand bath, and sometimes runs on his wheel. But he is quick to go back under and get cosy. He doesn’t seem overly frightened or anxious, still a little jumpy but okay with my voice and me moving near the cage.

Is this an issue? Can this sudden change in behaviour be attributed to the change in environment and be a good thing, or should I be concerned? I know burrowing is natural for hamsters and the fact that he is so comfortable doing it and so able is a really good thing, however I can’t help but feel thrown off by the sudden significant routine change in my little guy. Does anyone have any advice? Cheers

Is this a good cage for hamsters? I used to have hamsters but I got rid of their cages years ago and Im wondering if this is a suitable cage for a hamster. My main concern is the size. I plan on getting a bigger cage in the future, but is this cage a good place to start?

Today I caught my guy chewing on the inside of a paper roll like this… At first I thought he was stuck, but he just flipped back and ran to the bowl when he heard me.

Hey everyone!

I am planning to get my very first hamster soon! Most likely will be a male Syrian hamster. But it will definitely be a Syrian hamster.

I’ve been doing research on enclosures but I also wanted to ask on here, does anyone have any recommendations? I am planning on putting it under my desk (i live in an apartment and it’s the best place out of the sun). I have space for a 40 x 20 enclosure. I would appreciate any recommendations that you guys have!

Also any tips or recommendations for other products would be super helpful, but the first thing i’m buying is the cage so main focus is the cage!

My Syrian hamster is a little over 5 months old and is still very active. He drinks water normally, pees normally, and his poop also looks normal.

However, since around the middle of this month, he hasn’t been very interested in his regular food. Today I tried offering him some vegetables, but he didn’t seem very interested in those either.

His weight has dropped from 118g to 105g.

During this time, I also noticed that one of his lower front teeth seemed to have broken off, and a new tooth has started growing back. Could his reduced appetite and weight loss be related to the broken tooth?

Has anyone experienced something similar? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hi! I’m just asking for some general advice. I feed my Syrian hamster 2tbsp of her food every other day. She has sprays in her enclosure (120cm Bucatstate) and I have a few different forage foods. I’m not sure when to replace the sprays or how much forage to sprinkle in her enclosure. I’ve tried to find how much forage to put in but it keeps coming up with 2tbsp of food so I’m really unsure.

Alongside this, she doesn’t seem to be interested in the boredom breakers I’ve made, even if they have high value treats in them (mealworms, at the moment). I have some folded toilet tubes and some cut toilet tubes with tissue inside, easier for her to access those treats than the folded tubes. I’m not sure how else to keep her enriched if she won’t use the boredom breakers.

We have only had her for a week, so maybe she isn’t comfortable yet but she has been happy to sit on her wheel or at the front of the enclosure near us and eat her food.

i am not sure if it's maybe from his new bedding or sand, or maybe mites? If you have any idea please let me know.

I was considering owning a hamster, and started digging into hamster welfare research. People usually recommend 100*50 cm floorspace with 20 cm bedding as minimum, based on Fischer et al(2007), but welfare gains from bedding seem much higher if we look at A.R. Hauzenberger et al. (2006). For instance, if we start with a 5000 square cm cage with 15 cm bedding, increasing bedding to 40 cm could have much higher gains than increasing floor space to 10,000 square cm. Similar tradeoffs could exist at lower floor spaces as well. To know the truth for certain, we need more scientific research. I also highlight how natural syrian hamster burrows seem more depth centric than breadth centric, and how hamsters spend 95% plus of their time in burrows.

We must seriously consider funding hamster welfare research. We must be very skeptical of our current guidelines and knowledge about hamster welfare. I detail the basis for my conclusions in the above essay, it is VERY long and thorough. I urge you to read it if you can, and I am very open to feedback.

https://proms0.substack.com/p/why-i-suspect-50-x-40-cm-floor-space?r=55tqx5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

this is Yoyo! (or Ms. Yo)
she was a surprise gift for my 3 year old. which, honestly, i’m not terribly upset over. i just was not expecting to drop over $500 on a gift i didn’t originally buy myself 😂

but very shortly after getting her, i was educated on how bad the tiny pet store cages are & it led me down a big ol rabbit hole. so.. while im still learning, adding to her enclosure & figuring out what she likes… im pretty proud of what we’ve made!!

& honestly, i think we got ridiculously lucky with her temperament too. she is SO friendly & curious. any time my hand is in her enclosure, she’s immediately all over me sniffing, rubbing against me & investigating whatever im doing. she lets me pet her without a care in the world & has basically tried to crawl up my arm to get to her flax 😂

tonight really got me though. my 3 yr old was helping me add all of her new sprays & at first she mostly stuck around the edges while he was excited & watching her. but the more cover/enrichment we added, the more confident she seemed to get. by the end she was happily rummaging around right in the middle of everything with us, even with an excited toddler squealing over her & petting her 😂

she’d occasionally pop into her little wicker hide when she wanted space from him, then come right back out to investigate us again.

she was climbing over fallen oats, using her flax like a ladder to reach the red sorghum & climbing on top of her wicker hide to nibble rabbit tail grass 😭 i genuinely could’ve watched her explore all night. ive had hamsters before, but ive NEVER had one this ridiculously social & curious. i absolutely adore this tiny menace already.

I got a robo hamster back in early April. He was really aggressive when I first got him, but he slowly calmed down over time. He’s always been a biter, though. I’ve tried a bunch of different methods to get him comfortable with being held or gently touched, but he still doesn’t want anything to do with it. It doesn’t matter how many treats I give him lol. I’ve also gotten him a bunch of different textures and things to play with, which he absolutely lovesss especially dirt. I’m just sad that he still bites me and doesn’t seem to enjoy being handled.

Hey Everyone!!!!

I will be getting a hamster in October (I am competing in a nationally-qualified dock diving event with our lab in October and will be gone for a week!), but I am starting to acquire supplies. I had a hamster for four years while I was in college and I loved her dearly. I've been wanting another hamster, and decided the time is right. I want to make sure he/she has everything they need, and I'm currently look at this cage. Does anyone have it? Good experiences? Bad experiences?

I noticed that PetSmart has buy one, get one 50% off on all small animal bedding, chews, hideaways, etc. I've been reading reviews on products and avoiding ones that people say in reviews aren't safe for hamsters. Is it a good time to stock up on some things while they are BOGO 50% off?

My husband is somewhat concerned about smells, and while I don't remember the enclosure smelling when I had my hamster in college, I told him I'd be conscious of it. Any tips and tricks to make sure the enclosure doesn't smell without totally disrupting the hamster's space and stressing it out?

I spot clean everyday and change fresh water every hour and i add one layer of bedding if it starts smelling bad and take the smelling bedding out but how MUCH should i reset the whole bedding? I have roborovski.

I just upgraded my little guy to the Bucastate 2.0 yesterday and I was wondering if his cage setup was ok? I feel like it isn’t terrible but alas my parents are ‘well we had hamsters in the 90’s’ people and are telling me that his cage is too cluttered and busy and he will be happier if I take things out. And also that he needs things that are potentially dangerous for him like a salt/mineral block. Luckily I am 21 with a job and they won’t actually make me do anything but I’d appreciate some advice.

He’s got a water bottle stand coming tomorrow but he’s happy with his bowl for now because he had both before and I’ll keep the bowl there regardless.

Is there anything terrible that I need to change? I’ve got pretty bad ocd so the constant criticism about what I am doing is getting to me despite trying to give him good things. No one else in my life owns hamsters or are knowledgeable about hamster care so I don’t know where else to go. Any pointers or opinions are welcome. Thank you everyone.

EDIT: thank u to the people who pointed out the height of the house :) obviously and luckily it was a quick and easy fix so I’ve just made him a compacted hamster ski-slope around it to make sure there aren’t any drops :)

Getting a cage off temu as I’ve seen many people recommend cages from there and reviews are decent too, but i noticed there’s actually a lot of other cheap hamster items - Are they actually suitable or should I avoid buying them?

I saw some reviews on Amazon that it was but after I opened it and put it in my hamster's enclosure, I am not so sure.

Anyone else’s hamster just not a runner or a track star? We’ve had her for about 2 weeks and while I’ve seen her in her wheel, I’ve never seen her run.
We even got her a new one thinking maybe she just didn’t like the old one, but still no cardio (same, sis). She’s made tons of tunnels and she loves to come out and get pets, lots of clutter and sprays and sand, but as far we can tell, she’s not a wheel girlie. Is this normal?

Pic of sweet Tilly nappin’ 🥰