dear hamster abby

the circle of life

Topic: Gerbils
& Hamsters
Expert: JedediahDate: 12/19/2004Subject: What is happening?Question-------------------------Followup To Question -------------------------Followup To Question - what is my hamster doing? he is climbing on top of the female's back and biting her fur. Sometimes i see him doing something to her butt. please help me. i really want to know. thank you very much.Answer - Dear Zoe,thank you for your question.Your hamsters are mating. Please get a second cage and seperate them as soon as possible. Hamsters are solitary animals and shouldn't be kept together anyway. Plus there are too many homeless hamsters out there already and they shouldn't be bred accidentally.In case it's too late and the female is already pregnant, you must give her plenty of nesting material for her nest and provide her with animal protein in form of mealworms or at least curd. You won't see whether she's pregnant or not, but since Syrian (golden) hamsters are pregnant only 16-10 days and dwarf hamsters 19-22 days, you will know it pretty soon.They can have 1-10 babies. Make sure you find good homes for them and start searching when the babies are still small, it's not that easy. You might want to get an old tank to house the mother and her babies in because the babies can slip through the cage bars. The babies can and must be seperated from their mother when they are a month old and you should seperate male and female babies because they can breed when they are about 32-42 days old.I hope I was of some help to youJenniferbut she has already mated with another hamster i think. i don't really know if she is pregnant. the hamster she has already mated with has already died.help........Answer - Not every mating attempt results in a pregnancy. She can be pregnant, but you will have no way of knowing for sure until the time of the pregnancy is over. Of course you can see a vet who is knowledgeable about hamsters with her, who should be able to tell you, but apart from that, he won't do anything.I really recommend seperating the hamsters and not putting them together again, not even for a short time. I hope I was of some helpJenniferi think she is pregnant. her tummy is getting bigger.

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