Bobi!!

[Maz]

I'm sure the heat could make her more grumpy! It did make me more grumpy for a day or two!

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

Hi guys! I’m quite worried… Bobi keeps being grumpy and biting every single time we interact with her, it doesn’t matter who is it, she will bite any human.

These days we’ve observing new “worrying behaviours” in the green circle of the picture of her cage attached she learned how to get on the branches and climb into the lid doing “monkey bar” which I know is an stress behaviour. When I saw her doing that I always put my hand under her so she doesn’t get hurt, but I can’t be 24/7 there... As you can see the cage is 100 x 50 cms, she has deep bedding, multi chamber house, big wheel, sand box… She sometimes also tries to “scape” from the cage which may be a sign she wants to do free room. The thing is we don’t have any safe space at home so we bought the green fences you can see. She doesn’t look to enjoy being in there. She runs RIDICULOUSLY FAST and it’s hard for me to keep her safe in a room. When she’s inside the fences she runs like crazy but safe at least. But she also tries to scape climbing those fences (she can’t). Then after 20 minutes I take her back to the cage (I always hold her using a mug or a strainer to avoid painful bites that can make her fall) and she starts trying to scape/monkey bar.

I have to say that we see her doing this when she sees or hears us. I mean I don’t know what she does when we’re not there because we don’t have a camera so I hope it’s just her way to say “hey I’m here and I want your attention”.

Regarding to her grumpy constant mood I bought a goalkeeper football gloves to hold her and avoid pain but unfortunately she chew them and she “ate” a small piece of plastic that made me worry a lot of days. She’s fine and it’s been almost a week, but the glove idea it’s discarded. Maybe she just kept it in the pouch but never ate it and just left it in somewhere in the cage. I think she would chew any glove material… And it’s dangerous.

She hasn’t gone to the vet since March and her vet emailed me to say small animals like hamsters should be visited every 6 months and not every 12. So I will appoint a visit for ends of this month or October…

I’ve thought about “improving” her cage but honestly idk what else should we put. She gets sprays every two weeks (maybe you can’t see them in the picture because they were all eaten and removed by us).

Any advice or idea to make Bobi’s life better is appreciated

 

[Maz]

Hi there good to hear about bobi You know I find this with most hamsters when they get to a certain age - it's as if they have an inbuilt clock saying I need to live a bit and experience things I don't want to spend my life in a cage. It simply sounds like she wants to be out of the cage and run around and have some fun and so she tries to get your attention when she sees you. Tino's is doing the same thing and well he's about 20 months old now. He just wants to be out free roaming all night every night. And it's quite hard when you can't manage it every night, but he seems happy with his half an hour to 40 minutes out as long as it's regular so I would keep doing that - giving her time in her playpen/fence but I would try and do it at a set time each day/evening so she has a routine she can expect. She has a lovely cage set a lovely enclosure - I don't think there's anything wrong with that and I don't think it's stress behaviour - I think it's just she wants to start coming out and living life a bit. It could be a bit of stress behaviour if you've just given her a big clean out but I'm assuming that isn't the case.

Any hamster can monkey bar across the roof if they can get up there whether it's a meshed tank roof or a barred cage and theyre just looking for a way out especially at night which is a super active time of the day With a lot of pent up energy and their foraging instincts at night. I think the main thing is that she can't land on anything hard to injure herself. Having a look at your enclosure there doesn't seem to be too long a drop from the top. but landing on the bendy bridge could be hard - some people cover those with Hemp Mat for that reason I've seen that done in Germany and I've done it myself. Also I can't tell how low the platform is on the front left.

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

Hi there good to hear about bobi You know I find this with most hamsters when they get to a certain age - it's as if they have an inbuilt clock saying I need to live a bit and experience things I don't want to spend my life in a cage. It simply sounds like she wants to be out of the cage and run around and have some fun and so she tries to get your attention when she sees you. Tino's is doing the same thing and well he's about 20 months old now. He just wants to be out free roaming all night every night. And it's quite hard when you can't manage it every night, but he seems happy with his half an hour to 40 minutes out as long as it's regular so I would keep doing that - giving her time in her playpen/fence but I would try and do it at a set time each day/evening so she has a routine she can expect. She has a lovely cage set a lovely enclosure - I don't think there's anything wrong with that and I don't think it's stress behaviour - I think it's just she wants to start coming out and living life a bit. It could be a bit of stress behaviour if you've just given her a big clean out but I'm assuming that isn't the case.

Any hamster can monkey bar across the roof if they can get up there whether it's a meshed tank roof or a barred cage and theyre just looking for a way out especially at night which is a super active time of the day With a lot of pent up energy and their foraging instincts at night. I think the main thing is that she can't land on anything hard to injure herself. Having a look at your enclosure there doesn't seem to be too long a drop from the top. but landing on the bendy bridge could be hard - some people cover those with Hemp Mat for that reason I've seen that done in Germany and I've done it myself. Also I can't tell how low the platform is on the front left.

I didn’t know about how much can change her interests with the time! The truth she might be (we don’t know exact birthday) 16 or 17 months old. We have been out of home today from 11 to 5 pm and when we came back she was awake chilling in her sand (she loves doing that, and it’s a cool place -it’s very warm still in Barcelona-) and when she saw and heard us she started asking to go out. I let her being out in the playpen and I recorded this video attached. She also pooped 3 times and she usually does it at the vet because she’s stressed. Do you think she actually likes being there? I don’t think so but I hope she does!

The problem if she really needs more playpen time is that she doesn’t have regular schedules depends A LOT on the day. There’s days she wakes up at midday (and there’s nobody at home or we don’t have time) and days she wakes up at the afternoon such as today or days she wakes up quite late at night and everyone at home is sleeping… This is going to be hard lol

 

[Maz]

I didn’t know about how much can change her interests with the time! The truth she might be (we don’t know exact birthday) 16 or 17 months old. We have been out of home today from 11 to 5 pm and when we came back she was awake chilling in her sand (she loves doing that, and it’s a cool place -it’s very warm still in Barcelona-) and when she saw and heard us she started asking to go out. I let her being out in the playpen and I recorded this video attached. She also pooped 3 times and she usually does it at the vet because she’s stressed. Do you think she actually likes being there? I don’t think so but I hope she does!

The problem if she really needs more playpen time is that she doesn’t have regular schedules depends A LOT on the day. There’s days she wakes up at midday (and there’s nobody at home or we don’t have time) and days she wakes up at the afternoon such as today or days she wakes up quite late at night and everyone at home is sleeping… This is going to be hard lol

Please could you add the video as a youtube one It's the only video site we use on the forum now and also the googledrive one seemed blocked? Thank you!

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

Please could you add the video as a youtube one It's the only video site we use on the forum now and also the googledrive one seemed blocked? Thank you!

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there you go

 

[Maz]

Thank you! So fast! It's like she's on wheels But it looks like normal playpen behaviour - their mission is to get past walls! Even if she had the whole room she'd be trying to get past the door to the next room! You could maybe add more in the playpen to distract her - cardboard boxes, a chew stick. Carrot cottages are popular here - ours spend ages nibbling those

Tricky if she wants to come out at different times but I suspect she is loving out of cage time and wanting more!

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

Thank you! So fast! It's like she's on wheels But it looks like normal playpen behaviour - their mission is to get past walls! Even if she had the whole room she'd be trying to get past the door to the next room! You could maybe add more in the playpen to distract her - cardboard boxes, a chew stick. Carrot cottages are popular here - ours spend ages nibbling those

Tricky if she wants to come out at different times but I suspect she is loving out of cage time and wanting more!

Ok that makes me feel better I hope she doesn’t get hurt if she does monkey bar or tries to scape when we’re not there to take her out we got a hard pleasant hammie

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

Hey guys… I’m sorry I just come here to post “bad things”

Regarding the last post: Bobi didn’t get any better at biting, but it’s even worse, she started being “hyperactive”, she tries to scape from the cage, from the playpen… It looks like she only wants to run as crazy by our flat but that would be dangerously so she isn’t allowed to do that. We take her out of the cage using a mug but she will bite anytime she got a finger or hand near to her mouth.

We have booked an appointment to her vet this Friday because the thing that worries us the most is that she has lost a lot of weight (10 or 12 grams) in 3-4 months (eating the same food, same amounts…)

We needed to take away some cork branches she had in the enclosure because she uses them to “monkey bar” and once we saw her falling on tough cork or surfaces, now I feel the cage is quite empty and she might be angry because of this. She has also started to chew a corner of the cage, and it’s made of safe wood but we’re worried about her making a whole and scape, she’s totally obsessed with scape.

We feel awful and we don’t think there’s a solution? I mean what can we expect from the vet regarding this “behaviour issue”?

Thanks

 

[Maz]

Aw I'm sorry to hear this. How old is she again? Have you tested for diabetes? That can change their mood and cause other behaviours. You can just use human ketodiastix you can get from a pharmacy. You dip one of the sticks in a bit of her urine and it shows if it has sugar in it or not. Although often you can smell it in the urine if they do have it, but not always.

Yes she's probably stressed if some things have been removed from her cage. I'm wondering if you could add some new things to distract her? Even cardboard hides or tunnels? I take it she was climbing the branches to get to the roof?

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

Aw I'm sorry to hear this. How old is she again? Have you tested for diabetes? That can change their mood and cause other behaviours. You can just use human ketodiastix you can get from a pharmacy. You dip one of the sticks in a bit of her urine and it shows if it has sugar in it or not. Although often you can smell it in the urine if they do have it, but not always.

Yes she's probably stressed if some things have been removed from her cage. I'm wondering if you could add some new things to distract her? Even cardboard hides or tunnels? I take it she was climbing the branches to get to the roof?

Yes she climbed using the branches and she was “crazy” before taking them away… She has cardboard tubes from toilet paper and she never looks at them even! Since she will be taken to the vet on Friday we will ask him to make her any test or anything that could give us a clue, such as the urine test, poops, fur… The urine smells the same to me though, and we’ve been careful about the diabetes issue! No fruit at all, just veggies, always eating Rodipet mix designed to avoid diabetes… By the way she’s 16 or 17 months old (we don’t know exactly if she was born on April or May 2024)