Many people think they can go to the pet store to quickly buy a hamster and a cage. And usually that cage should not be too big. At the pet shop you get wrong advice about the cage, because they are almost always too small, and wrong advice about gnawing stones, licks and the right running wheel for your rodent.
Select hamster
Most people buy their hamster from the pet store, you better not do this and you can read more about that in another article of mine. When you buy a hamster from a pet store, make sure you always buy one, never buy several hamsters together.
When you put hamsters together it will go well at first, because they are still young. But as soon as they get older things go wrong, a hamster is a solitary animal and that means that a hamster lives on its own, it is really not sad to keep a hamster alone, you do them a favor because other hamsters will see them as intruders. What will happen then is usually predictable, both hamsters will be injured and usually dead or near death. And you don’t want to do that to your pet.
Choosing a cage
Dwarf hamster
Dwarf hamsters need a smaller cage than Golden Hamsters / Syrian hamsters, because they are a bit smaller. Watch your cage not smaller is then 50cm by 70cm. Here are cages large enough for dwarf hamsters:
- Ferplast Duna Fun
- Ferplast Duna
- Ferplast Mini Duna
- Ferplast Liza
- Ferplast Rainbow
- Ferplast Mary
- Savic Hamster Cage Cambridge
- Hagen Fun Area Leon rodent cage
- Rodent cage Kios
The cages Ferplast Paula and Ferplast Laura are not big enough, even if it has pipes attached. The most important thing is the ground surface, where your hamster should be able to take a spin.
Golden hamster or Syrian hamster
Golden hamsters need a larger cage than Dwarf Hamsters, you can never put Golden Hamsters in a Dwarf cage, because this is very pathetic. The minimum sizes of Goudhamsters / Syrian hamsters 50cm by 100cm, but bigger is always better. Here are examples of cages that are good for Golden Hamsters:
- Ferplast Mary
- Ferplast Jenny
- Ferplast Degus
- Gabber Jolly
- Deckx Mesh Cages
- Savic Hamster cage Hamster Heaven 80
- Rodent cage Alexander
- Rodent cage Barney
Why can’t you put hamsters in small cages?
Hamsters need space, in the wild they run more than 12 kilometers (!) A night. That is an awful lot for such a small animal, therefore it is better not to put your hamster in a small cage, if you have the space, buy a good cage for your hamster. As a person you don’t live in the bathroom all your life, to go out for a few hours (2 or 3) a day, then you go crazy too?
Large cages are expensive
It’s true that large pet store cages are expensive, but how about buying second-hand? Like on Marktplaats, there are many large cages for small prices, often you have a very nice cage for 25 to 30 euros, and in the pet shop you have a small cage for that. You can also often find nice cages on sites such as Zooplus, but pay attention to the minimum sizes for your hamster.
Where can you find the right information?
You can obtain a lot of information about hamsters and cages via the internet, for example the hamster forum (www.forum.dehamster.nl) and the Dutch hamster site (www.dehamster.nl) which contains a lot of useful and correct information.
