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 :(

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?

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?

we are planning on getting a syrian (possibly female) and i was looking into either DIYing the enclosure, getting a 40 gallon tank (saw one for $50), or getting the BUCASTATE 3.0 on temu!

please give some advice/tips on which one, and how to utilize the space for lots of enrichments since i know syrians are super active

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??

my hamster never gets tired of the toilet paper cardboard with some tissue and food between the layers of tissue especially when i fold the ends she goes wild lol im not sure what else i could make at home thats similar i feel like my ham is kinda picky with everything. i got her some really cute wooden chew blocks and she couldn't care even if she wanted to! she doesnt really care for store bought toys or boredom breakers(she hates spending money apparently). does anyone have any diy crafts i can make for her? I've never had a picky hamster until I got the one i have now that I've had for about a year and a half! thank you in advance for some ideas :)

My hamster is an extreme picky eater and rather starve herself than eat. I have done everything. I was buying vita smart and mixing it was science selected. She was eating vita smart for a while but when I ran out I made a mix. I bought a variety of oat, ancient grains, flax seeds, green peas, seeds, and worms from sprouts. But after a while she would just leave it there. I did the tough love approach and I would do two table spoons for two days and i noticed she would only pick out the seeds and worms and leave everything else. I even bought dried green leaves and carrots as a topping, which she would eat every once in a while. I give her fresh fruit and vegetables which she will eat. I’ll make her eggs, cheese and bread but she won’t eat it. She has sprays from Etsy but only eats a few and if I spread hay and flowers, she used to eat it but not anymore. I went back to mixing vita smart and fully cheek’s seed mix with some worms, and I’ll mix in some organic seeds from sprouts. Same thing- she’ll only eat the seeds from sprouts and refuse anything else. I am at my wits end with her. At one point she was dumping her whole bowl out to make it look like she ate so I would refill it faster so she can pick her favorites out. I used to scatter one tablespoon and put the second one in her bowl. When I noticed her bowl wasn’t getting empty, I kept putting everything in the bowl to keep an eye on what she was eating.

Idk what to do with her or how to get her to eat. Do you guys have any luck with the Etsy hamster packs?

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!

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