hamster babies....

Question

-------------------------

Followup To

Question -
My hamster is a golden.The pet store told me she might be pregnant when i bought her on Wednesday. That coming Monday she gave birth to 8 pups. She ate two and now we think we still have six. We were wondering if she will stop eating them after a certain age? Right now they are 9 days old. We are scared to even change her water and food for fear of disturbing her and making her feel threatened.

Answer -
Hi Anne, thanks for the question.

Hamsters commiting infantacide and cannabilism with their pups has little to do with how old they are and more to do with if she feels stressed (which a move and the handling that goes along with it right before delivery would do), if she feels she has the necessary resources to raise a litter, and if she feels the litter is healthy enough to spend time and resources on.  It also has a lot to do with how tame mom is.  If mom is extremely docile and used to handling, she's not likely to commit infanticide because you touched her babies.  Chances are, she enjoys her time being handled by people and isn't concerned if her babies smell slighly like people - after all, her environment is saturated by human smell, since we have created and touched everything they live in and have contact with.  Moms that are not as docile or do not like being handled as much would be more stressed by human interference, however, and may well cannabalise her babies because of disturbances near her nest.

So the best policy, unless you know your hamster very well, is one of non-interference until fourteen days old.

If she ate two and still has six, chances are she ate those two because there was something wrong with them, and they would have died anyway.  Or they may have died because something was wrong with them and THEN she ate them because it's easy protein for her that would benefit her surviving pups.

Don't be scared to change her food and water.  Those are the essentials, and she needs those.  Do it quickly, do it quietly, and resist the urge to disturb her nest to see how many pups she has left.

Do not, however, clean the cage bedding until the pups are at least fourteen days old.  We say by fourteen because that's about the longest you'll want to go without changing it before you run the risk of bacterial infections and such from dirty bedding.  If mom is the nervous jumpy sort, we'd advise you to go longer if we could, but it's just too unsanitary and not worth the risk.Thank you for being so quick to answer my question it was most helpful! I was also wandering if u knew if it was better to feed the babies there water with a bottle or a dish?

Answer
It would be better just to lower mom's water bottle enough so that they can reach it when they start to venture out and explore the cage.

Water dishes don't do well in small animal cages because more often than not, dirty bedding gets thrown or dragged into them causing bacteria to grow in the water, and then bacterial infections in the animals that drink the water.  Also, you wouldn't want your babies to fall into the dish and drown because they couldn't get back out.

They'll smell the water and learn to lick the spout to drink just like mom does, either by watching her or by trial and error.  :)