Sexing young dwarfs

Question
Hi! I am hoping someone can help me determine the genders of my 4 young dwarf hammies. They are 18 days old today, and I've read that you can tell by how far apart the holes are "down there" but I've looked at all of them and they all seem to be equally spaced! So I don't know if the margin of difference is just not obvious to me, or if I just don't know what to look for.

Since they are only 18 days old they're still very wiggly. And they don't make it easy to "inspect" Any advice?

Also, my parent hammies have just had new babies today (I even got to watch it happen....very cool) I would like to avoid this happening again. Do you have any idea when it would be safe to take Daddy out of the cage so they don't have more babies?

Thanks for any information you can give me....I'm at a loss here :O)

Answer
Hi,

I can be hard to sex hamsters if you've never done it before. But once you get used to it's very easy. The holes on a female are very close together almost looking as one were males have them further apart. You've still got about another week until you need to seperate them by sex so just keep trying everyday. Ones that look the same are usually the same sex.

If you don't want any more pups I would seperate the Father right now because they usually mate again within 24 hours of the last birth. Once you sort the pups out by sex you can put all the males with the father.

Good luck!

Deborah