teddy bear hasmter contagious illness

Question
hello there.
im zhilan. my situation goes like this. i have four adult male hamsters, three adult female hamsters and 15 baby hamsters (5 to each mom). what happened here was, i noticed one of the hamsters with eyes filled with discharges and they cant open their eyes. so what i did was bathe her. then later that day, she cant walk - she was so stiff, her breathing was so fast, her genital part was wet, she was too weak to eat or drink. within a day and half she died. on the following days, the other babies got infected and died too showing the same symptoms. now, the adults are still here, i have 5 baby hamsters left. my brother hunches that its the food they're eating (ordinary sunflower seeds because they used to eat the Vitacraft hamster food). please help, i dont want them to die.:(

Answer
Hello Zhilan,
it sounds like your hamsters have wettail. The best thing to do is to take them all to a vet for antibiotics. Wettail is highly contagious and so you should take extra care to keep their cages clean, especially bowls and water bowels. Wettail is a bacterial infection and the most common sign is diarrhea. It causes dehydration and one thing that I found that helps is to give them water though a dropper to keep them hydrated. Don't give them baths until they are well. It's also best not to breed the hamsters that have gotten wettail.