Syrian Bar Biting on cage

I think the main thing is to try and get the set up right before moving the hamster in so you don’t need to keep adjusting or tweaking things. That can stress them when they’ve just moved.

I find it takes a while - do you have somewhere to put her while you’re moving things over? Eg a pet carrier? I used to put ours in a pet carrier in another room with a blanket over and he’d just go to sleep. But also it meant he couldn’t hear and smell all the goings on - they always seem to know when you’re messing with their cage :-). And get a bit anxious.

Another tip is once they’ve moved into the new cage - remove the old one from the room. I have found it can unsettle them when trying to settle into a new one if the old one is still around. Maybe like a homing instinct.
 
I do have a pet carrier, I was going to put her in the playpen, my other half would watch her
Maz said:
As the new cage is bigger it'll take more substrate. So I put new substrate in the cage first - almost to the top of the base. And spread the old substrate on top of that (so it smells familiar). That really helps as others have said.

You kind of do the opposite of what you would think. Instead of having everything clean and perfect for a new cage, you just move everything over without cleaning.

I find it helps to let them play in the cage the day before the move. It's just a kind of adjustment thing and along with keeping everything smelling familiar, can help a hamster settle quicker. The other thing is, it means they have already scent marked a lot while exploring it the day before moving, so it's already familiar.

So for the play/explore day, I put new substrate in the cage - almost full. And just a few items in there. Maybe 2 or 3 new items you're going to use in the cage, plus one familiar toy from the old cage. They tend to enjoy exploring any new environment. Then even if they're enjoying it I still pop them back in the old cage overnight. Then do the changeover the next day. It makes a huge difference keeping everything smelling familiar and can only need a few days for them to settle without being too skittish. Whereas a cold turkey move - they can be very stressed for about two weeks.

It may be different with dwarfs - I've mainly done cage upgrades/changes with Syrians - who can be quite picky! Our robo was much more adaptive quickly.

But the main thing you need is plenty of substrate, some kind of shelf ideally - and a large house that's dark inside ideally, and then a few floor toys etc. You don't need to spend a lot. A house can be a shoebox house, tubes can be pringles tubes. I also use cardboard egg boxes sometimes.

General items that are good for syrians are - cork logs, rat sized tubes, a coconut hut has always been popular with ours. I tend to have one of the Rosewood rainbow bridges - they all seem to like running over that. I also use the hanging rat sputniks - next to a shelf - a kind of hanging hide.

So if wanting some ideas, what I have in my Syrian's cage is:

Shelf on the right - with a hide, a water bottle over and a ceramic dish where I put his veg, and a rat sputnik hanging next to it

Large house on the left. This has a small shelf over it with a ramp up to the small shelf - next to another rat sputnik.

Wheel centre back in between them.

I also have a rat tube tied to the roof of the cage, leading between the two sputniks. This creates a kind of roof run - somewhere else to go and another way of getting to the shelf on the other side. Plus it provides some overhead cover. Some hamsters don't like too much space above them.

I don't think you will need to get much more if you have a house and a shelf but I'd say a priority with a syrian is a large house that's dark inside - it really helps them settle and have normal behaviours and build a large nest. They do need somewhere dark to retreat to. A nesting box basically.

You can use the existing familiar items from the current cage (some if not all of them). And you can always add the odd thing later as long as it doesn't mean moving things around. They accept new things added quite well but they don't like things changing position!
Click to expand...
I've noticed that I can't really see that anyone has used the shelf that comes with the Plaza, is it because of all the holes at the edge? Any suggestions for the right platform to add?
 
The holes didn't worry me and it would be easy to cover the shelf with a piece of thick cardboard, a hemp mat or boredom breaker mats tied into place.
I just didn't like the size of the shelf and used two 28cm Trixie corner shelves instead in my Syrian Clive's Plaza.
Here you can see one shelf and there's another opposite but there are plenty of other shelves available. Saying that, there's nothing wrong with the Plaza corner shelf if you like it.

Screenshot_20230317-110125_Samsung Internet.jpg
 
Beryl said:
The holes didn't worry me and it would be easy to cover the shelf with a piece of thick cardboard, a hemp mat or boredom breaker mats tied into place.
I just didn't like the size of the shelf and used two 28cm Trixie corner shelves instead in my Syrian Clive's Plaza.
Here you can see one shelf and there's another opposite but there are plenty of other shelves available. Saying that, there's nothing wrong with the Plaza corner shelf if you like it.
Click to expand...
That is such a good picture!
 
As Beryl says there is nothing wrong with using the shelf it comes with. I don't like the holes (intended for rats probably) but there are ways round that as mentioned above. I've seen someone stick bedding in the holes to block them. The main reason I don't use it is that, with the ladder as well - it does take up a lot of space in the cage which can restrict how you want to set it up. Eg it makes it harder to fit in a large house and a syrian wheel in the locations that you want them sometimes.

My other main reason was I'd had a different 100cm cage before that came with a straight wood shelf at one end (as some cages do) and I found that worked well, so I wanted to recreate the same set up. I actually bought a pine shelf on ebay and cut it to fit. (some places will make them to the size you specify but you still need to cut a little bit off two corners). The inside corners of the plaza are curved, with the struts hence needing to cut a bit off wood shelves at the corners.

I kind of like having shelf at one end - large house at the other end (the flat roof makes another shelf) and the wheel centre back between them. But there are other ways you can set up a cage!

The wood corner shelves Beryl uses are a good option as well and less fitting issues as they can overlap each other (one in each corner).

Since having hamsters, I've had sandpaper and a small saw handy! But it's not essential.

It can save money to use the green shelf and mean you don't have to buy so many things. But I think it's important to have a large house in there as well.
 
I'm looking for some more toys for my hamster now, are any of these okay:
Rosewood Naturals Animal Activity Toy Banana Leaf Carrot Stuffer
Rosewood Wacky rollers
Rosewood Loofa Hoola
 
Rosewood clearly have some new items as I haven't seen some of these before.

The banana leaf toy - the woven external leaf seems fine but I'm not sure about the filling it's stuffed with. If you did get one I would remove the filling. This one presumably?

Banana Leaf Carrot Stuffer :: Rosewood Pet

Ideal for pets to play with and chew. once the corn leaf stuffing has been removed you can fill with your pet's favourite treats for an added challenge! Made from only 100% natural materials. With no glue or metal. Made from tough but fun to chew woven banana leaf. Can also be used by hamsters...
www.rosewoodpet.com www.rosewoodpet.com

The Wacky Rollers - sound ok, materials wise, but as they contain a plastic ball you might need to keep an eye on chewing. They seem intended for larger pets as quite big (the ball part is 5" tall). Some reviewers complaining about the amount of glue. The materials seem ok (corn, seagrass, loofah, sisal)

Wacky Rollers :: Rosewood Pet

www.rosewoodpet.com www.rosewoodpet.com

The Loofa Hoola is fine - I use these and so do others

Loofa Hoola :: Rosewood Pet

Natural loofa and corn leaf hanging toy. Fun for all small animals including rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters.Fun for pets to play with and chew. 23cm total length, 7cm dia
www.rosewoodpet.com www.rosewoodpet.com

These are good though: Rosewood trio of balls

 
Maz said:
Rosewood clearly have some new items as I haven't seen some of these before.

The banana leaf toy - the woven external leaf seems fine but I'm not sure about the filling it's stuffed with. If you did get one I would remove the filling. This one presumably?

Banana Leaf Carrot Stuffer :: Rosewood Pet

Ideal for pets to play with and chew. once the corn leaf stuffing has been removed you can fill with your pet's favourite treats for an added challenge! Made from only 100% natural materials. With no glue or metal. Made from tough but fun to chew woven banana leaf. Can also be used by hamsters...
www.rosewoodpet.com www.rosewoodpet.com

The Wacky Rollers - sound ok, materials wise, but as they contain a plastic ball you might need to keep an eye on chewing. They seem intended for larger pets as quite big (the ball part is 5" tall). Some reviewers complaining about the amount of glue. The materials seem ok (corn, seagrass, loofah, sisal)

Wacky Rollers :: Rosewood Pet

www.rosewoodpet.com www.rosewoodpet.com

The Loofa Hoola is fine - I use these and so do others

Loofa Hoola :: Rosewood Pet

Natural loofa and corn leaf hanging toy. Fun for all small animals including rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters.Fun for pets to play with and chew. 23cm total length, 7cm dia
www.rosewoodpet.com www.rosewoodpet.com

These are good though: Rosewood trio of balls

Click to expand...
Thank You! The trio of balls I have already, thanks for the advice
 
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Cosmic hamsters has a couple of videos on ideas for setting up the Plaza cage. It's one way of doing it. One is for setting it up on a budget and using the green shelf. The other is another kind of set up (although both are similar).

Mine looks like this. There's a fair bit of open space in the middle, but Raffy is a very confident, gregarious hamster.

IMG_0050 resized.jpg
 
I guess you could use the green shelf without the ladder then there'd be more space for a house, wheel and other items. I sometimes use a cork log instead of a ladder. Pushed under the shelf at an angle, so it's partly under the shelf. It then doubles up as a tunnel leading under the shelf, and something to climb up as access to the shelf. You can probably just about see that on the photo above.
 
Even within the toys linked on Hope's Healthy treats, there's a need to check which size hamster things are suitable for! Things like the teepee and grass nest are often only big enough for dwarf hamsters.

The treat puzzle looks fun for out of cage time. I'll be honest though, most of our Syrians have ignored these!
 
I have shelves in all four corners with two 28cm corner shelves overlapping on the right and two smaller ones connected by a porridge tube on the left. A large house, wheel, sand jar and various tunnels like hyacinth, wicker, cork etc.
The hanging toys have more of a decorative purpose or to hang spaghetti from.
My hamster aren't really interested in toys unless there's food involved.

20230317_203249.jpg
 
Hi All, just a little update. Move day was on Sunday, she had an intro on Saturday and didn't really want to leave. We followed the advice and she actually seemed pretty unfazed by the move. There is still a small amount of bar chewing, maybe 5-10 mins, but not with a lot of effort.
She wakes up quite early, about 5:30 to 6pm, I think it is when I finish work. She comes out after she has been awake for a while, but I get her out again around 9ish. Is this okay or will it be making her more excited. I don't want her to get bored. Also, I'm going to get more things for the cage, how long should I wait to introduce new things?
 
That’s great she’s settled in and much less bar biting. As for getting her out, maybe let her take the lead - if she’s interested in coming out when you open the door (eg walks into a tube) then good. If not I’d leave her. She will still be settling a bit. Adding a new item will probably be accepted as long as it doesn’t mean moving something but I think it would be better to wait another week or two. You don’t want her to get stressed and start bar biting again.
 
Really pleased to hare how well she’s settled, sounds like she really likes her new cage.
I think it’s ok to add the odd thing as long as it’s not too much at one time & doesn’t involve changing things around it should be fine.
 
Thanks, that's good advice. So, I'm assuming you can't let them out too much?
I think I will wait to add for a little longer, the cage shares above have given some good ideas.
 
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