Help taking care of hamster baby's

[Ghetto2k4]

Hey,

today i got a call from my sister sayin my sister son hamster had 6 baby's and im tryin to find a carein sheet how to keep them and what foods to feed the mom and stuff so..the baby's dont die or anything b/c im goin to take a baby but i want them stay heathy and stuff so..the mom or the dad will not kill the baby's or anything

[dagwellismypigy]

Do NOT touch the babies!! Seperate the two parents immediatly. Are they dwarfs or syrians?
http://www.hamsterheaven.co.uk/breeding.html
http://www.hamsterific.com/BreedingHamsters.cfm
http://www.hamsterific.com/RaisingPups.cfm

[Ghetto2k4]

i dont know if they are dwarfs or syrians but how can u tell? & thx for the links too

[dagwellismypigy]

You need to find out. If they are syrians once they are weaned each one of them needs a cage by them selves, with dwarfs you can have them in same sex groups. Dwarfs tend to be smaller than syrians, hence the name. Are they different colors or are they grey?

[Ghetto2k4]

one is black & little white in it and the other is i think all black

[dagwellismypigy]

What about the babies, they sound like syrians, how big are they?

[Moxie]

I once got 2 dwarf hamsters from a neighbor. I was told they were both females. Well they were wrong. I ended up with an unexpected litter. All I knew was that I had to take the male out. Well I took the one that I thought was the male out. But I took the female out! I look back now and feel soooo stupid. Well I thought all was well because the mom (actually the dad) seemed to be taking very good care of the babies. He was with them a lot and never tried to eat them. Soon all the babies died because they were not being fed. (I feel horrible about taking the mother out!) Well at that point I still didn’t know I had taken the mother out. I found out I did when I came home one night and found a litter of babies in the one I thought was a male! That litter ended up surviving. They were the cutest little babies ever! After the babies I had the original two hammies for about 2.5 years. The hammies even moved from California to Massachusetts with us . Hope all goes well with the hammies!

[Ly&Pigs]

Ghetto2k4-please post properly. Chat speak is not allowed on this forum. You need to use proper capitalization and punctuation. Read this link for forum rules. http://cavycages.com/forum/announcem...nouncementid=7

[daftscotslass]

Do NOT touch the babies or the mother may kill them. Leave them well alone for at least a couple of weeks. The cage must just be spot cleaned during this time. The mother's diet can be supplemented with a little tofu or plain boiled egg to give her some extra protein. Make sure to clean out any that is uneaten as it can rot.

Dwarf hamsters will fit in the palm of your hand. Syrian hamsters are up to twice or three times larger. If the male and female have been left in the same cage right up until the babies appeared, she will almost definitely be pregnant again. This applies to both dwarf and Syrian hamsters.

If they are Syrian hamsters they MUST be housed alone. Syrians are solitary creatures and can and WILL fight to the death even if they have lived together peacefully for years. So, your sister needs to be prepared to house them seperately (as in each hamster in one cage, so 8 seperate cages). They can breed from as young as 3-6 weeks, so they must be AT LEAST seperated by sex at this age, and housed singly by 2 months old. It is not good enough to wait until the first signs of trouble - when Syrians fight, usually one or neither survive. Dwarves must also be seperated by sex around a month old.