Dwarf Hamster - possible blindness?

Question
Hi - we are currently looking after a dwarf hamster while its owners are on holiday for 2 weeks.  I am slightly concerned as I the gerbil emptied its entire water bottle in 4 days (is that normal?), and it's eyes have grey/white spots in the middle, which I'm not ENTIRELY sure were there before.. I am worried as obviously I do not want the hamster to die while its owners are away!  Could it be blind?  Is this due to something I may have done wrong?  We have had him for almost a week, he has been cleaned out once and has had fresh food and water every couple of days, including fresh sunflower seeds from a sunflower growing in our garden (which he seems to love, he has been ignoring all the other food, eg pellets) - please help, I'm really worried!

Answer
Hi Elli

Isn't it a worry looking after someone else's hamster/pet, then they get sick?  It's probably my worst fear.  However, depending on what type of dwarf hamster this is - one type in particular, Campbells are very prone to diabetes, and this can result in blindness.  If they are affected by this, they drink loads - a Syrian hamster (who is a lot larger than a dwarf)would drink a whole bottle in a day, so based on this, I would think this is definitely a possibility that the hamster you have is suffering from this.  Usually a hamster would drink very little, so you know when they have diabetes - also, if the hamster is drinking a lot, they will be weeing a lot too.  If his eyes have a cloudy white spot in the middle, this sounds as though it could be cataracts.  This isn't serious for a hamsters as they are very shortsighted anyway, and loss of sight doesn't have a huge impact on their life.  Is there any discharge from the eyes? Any pus, or do they look sore at all?  Does he seem to be bothered by this?  What is his behavior like apart from all this?  If there are other symptoms, then you may need to get him to a vet.  However, cataracts tend to go hand in hand with diabetes.

Of course, there could be another reason for this hamster's behavior, but based on what you've told me, I think this is possibly the problem.

You can check this theory - if you go to your local vet you can get a 'diastix' (they might let you have one of these without having to go for an actual appointment as there's not a lot of point in incurring a vet charge for diagnosing diabetes as there's nothing they can do about it - or if you know of anyone who is diabetic they might have them, or a chemist might sell them).  If you can get hold of this you want to put the hamster in an empty cage/container and wait for it to wee.  Then dip this diastix in the hamster's urine.  It registers the amount of glucose in the urine and the likelihood of it having diabetes.  In larger animals a blood test would be taken, but this is close to impossible in hamsters.  If you don't want to do this, you could wait until your friend returns from their holiday so that they can do it.

However, the most important thing is to check what food you are feeding him.  You must not feed him any sugary foods - this includes apples, and other fruit, dried fruit that is often in hamster mixes, also honey is often used in hamster treats.  Remove anything like this from his cage immediately.  In order to deal with diabetes, hamsters need to take in a good amount of essential fatty acids.  This is contained in sunflower, sesame, pumpkinseeds and linseeds.  If you can get all of these and mix them together and give him a small a handful of these every couple of days or so.  He also needs his usual hamster mix, but as mentioned above, remove anything that might contain sugar.

In a lot of cases, the hamster can deal with the diabetes and their body can adjust so that eventually they can control it by diet.  Occasionally they die from this, but in my experience most go on to live a full life.  They do sometimes put on a bit of weight while they're adjusting their eating habits, also sunflower seeds are fattening, but often this stabilizes over time.

Also, make sure his water bottle is always full and that it doesn't accidentally drain.  I would suggest you remove any soiled bedding on a daily basis.

I've had several dwarf hamsters with diabetes (an entire family I had all had it), but most were fine.  I've currently got a Syrian with it (it is very rare for Syrians to develop this), and having gone from a bottle of water a day (I put in a second bottle just in case one bottle wasn't enough for her), she has now stabilized it with the correct diet and eating little and often.  Now she's down to the usual amount of water and is doing just fine.

Please feel free to get back in touch if you have any more worries.  
Regards