Habits

Question
Hi my hamster.I barely got her yesterday.She is about three months old.Well there is a a tube that connects fromthe cage to the wheel.The tube is a few inches off the ground. She will go up ,but she wont come down!I have to take her out of her little wheel( shaped like a ball)then put her back in her cage.She just wont stay she will keep on going up.What do i do? And she also throws her food all over her cage! im afraid she wont know where to find her food.

Answer
Hi Bella.

It sounds as though your hamster has picked that spot for her nest.  She will come out, but she will do it in the evening and at night, because hamsters are nocturnal.  When she wakes up, she will climb back down the tube and forage around her cage for food, but during the day she will go back to her nest area (in this cage the wheel) and sleep all day.

Don't try to force her to stay in her cage by continually picking her up and moving her back, that will only stress her and probably make her cranky, and likely she will just climb back up as many times as you remove her.  If you don't want her to use the wheel as a nest, just remove it from the cage and block the tunnel with the caps that are sold for that purpose.

She takes her food, puts it in her cheek pouches, and then carries it to other areas in her cage to "hoarde" it for later.  Make sure her food dish always has food in it, but don't be particularly upset when she does this - she's just doing what hamsters do.  The only concern you should have is if your cage has a wire bottom in which the food could fall through, or if she takes it into the wheel nest, in which case it will probably be urinated on and dirtied.

You might want to try buying her rodent blocks as her main diet instead of the mixed seed diet, and just giving her mixed seeds in the form of the treat chew sticks that are sold.  That way, she can't scatter the blocks all over the cage, and if she does, they are less likely to get "lost".  Also, the  blocks are hard and help to wear down their teeth, and are a more balanced diet than mixed seeds because she can't just pick out what she likes best (the sunflower seeds) and only eat that.

Thanks for the question, feel free to ask me any others you may have!