Male Siberian hamster

Question
QUESTION: My daughters male hamster was found dead.  He was around 8 months old and looked in good health,  He was used to mate and it went well except that I found that his genitals looked sore after a few days.  This cleared up after treating them to savlon.  Could his mating have caused him to die, is this a risk with hamsters?

ANSWER: Hi Nicola

I'm sorry to hear about your daughter's hamster.  It must have been a shock to find him, especially as he was so young.

Mating in itself would not cause a hamster to die.  The problem often with mating is more for the female as you don't want to over-mate her which can make her tired and some females get very weak if they keep having babies and this can then have an effect on any future litters and make the susceptible to illness.

It is difficult to know why your hamster died.  I'm assuming that there were no other signs in his behaviour - i.e. eating and drinking normally, no sign of diarrhoea and he was playing as usual etc.  Dwarf hamsters (Campbell variety in particular) are prone to suffering from diabetes - however, if a hamster has this there are clear signs that something is wrong - they drink loads of water whereas hamsters usually only have a few drops or so a day.   Usually you don't notice the water bottle level changing, but in cases of diabetes you are re-filling it daily.  Also, because of the excessive drinking they need cleaning out a lot more frequently and their urine can smell sweet.  I have had whole litters with this and some of the hamsters died very young, others managed to control their condition and live a full life.  Is there any chance he had this?  If you are not sure, then have a look at your other hamsters and see how they are.  It is easy to test for - you isolate a hamster in a plastic container/carry case and leave them there until they pee- then you test their pee with a 'diastix'.  You can get the diastix from the vet (you might be able to get them from a chemist or pet shop too).  If the diastix shows an abnormal reading for glucose then there is a pretty good chance it is diabetes.  If you find this to be the case definitely do not mate any of them and let me know and I can advise you on changing their diet etc.

Another thing that can happen to young hamsters is that they can have a genetic problem that only appears as they get older.  I had a baby hamster, just 8 weeks old, who died of heart failure.  It could just be that your hamster had something wrong with him such as this and he would have died young regardless of whether or not he had mated.  

Sorry I can't shed more light on this. I hope the other hamsters are OK.

Regards



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you for your prompt reply.  Could I trouble you with another question.  This hamster died with little evidence of illness although my daughter said that he was bleeding slightly from his genitals.  As I said this cleared up and I thought that he may have damaged himself by scratching his penis on the cage floor, but I noticed that this happen to another one of her hamsters last year, an old Russian hamster that again bled from his bottom or genitals. He had not been mated and was quite old.  Do hamsters suffer from cancer?

Answer
Was this male living with another hamster?  Did you keep him in with the female?  The thing that comes to mind is more likely fighting marks.  When dwarf hamsters attack each other they often nip each other's rear end and I just wonder that if he was in a cage with another hamster then this could be have caused the bleeding.  They often squabble, but if these squabbles become more serious and there is a sign of blood or bite marks then they have to be separated.

Hamsters are very prone to getting tumors, but usually you wouldn't expect to see a tumor until the hamster is around 2 years old.  Sometimes males can get testicular cancer and whilst this is possible, it is quite rare.

Regards