Many people think they can go to the pet store and quickly buy a hamster and hamster cage. And usually, the cage shouldn’t be too big either. You get wrong advice about the cage at the pet store because they are almost always too small, and wrong advice about gnawing stones, licks, and the right running wheel for your little rodent.
Table of Contents
Choose hamster
Most people buy their hamsters in the pet store, it is better not to do this and you can read more about that in another article from me. When you buy a hamster from a pet store, make sure that you always buy one, never buy several hamsters together.
When you put hamsters together it goes well at the beginning, because they are still young. But as soon as they get older things to go wrong, after all a hamster is a solitary animal and that means that a hamster lives on its own, it is really not pathetic to keep a hamster alone, you are doing them a favor because other hamsters will see them as intruders. What happens then is usually predictable, both hamsters will be injured and usually dead or almost dead. And you don’t want to do that to your animal.
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Choose Hamster cage
dwarf hamster
Dwarf hamsters need a smaller cage than Golden/Syrian hamsters because they are a bit smaller. Make sure your cage is no smaller than 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
- Kiosk rodent cage
The cages Ferplast Paula and Ferplast Laura are not big enough, even though they have tubes on them. The most important thing is the ground surface, where your hamster must be able to jump into.
Golden hamster or Syrian hamster
Golden Hamsters need a bigger cage than Dwarf Hamsters, you can never put Golden Hamsters in a Dwarf Cage because this is very pathetic. The minimum sizes of Golden Hamsters/Syrian hamsters are 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
- Decks Grid 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 (!) per night. That is an awful lot for such a small animal, so it is better not to put your hamster in a small cage, if you have space for it, buy a good cage for your hamster. As a human being 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, right?
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Large hamster cages are expensive
Large hamster cages at the pet store are indeed expensive, but how about buying second-hand? Like on Marktplaats, there are many large cages for small prices, you often have a very nice cage for 25 to 30 euros, and you have a small cage for that in the pet store. You can often find beautiful 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 find a lot of information about hamsters and cages via the internet, such as the hamster forum (www.forum.dehamster.nl) and the Dutch hamster site (www.dehamster.nl) which contains a lot of useful and correct information.
