Hamsters

17th Feb 05 -

Thea babies are now 15 days old. The grey baby hamster (baby 3) is the most adventurous. Today baby 3 negotiated the length of the tube in/out of the cage... baby 3 is also the one we have to watch when the top is off the cage.

17th Feb 05 - Snack time

Here, all 10 babies are snacking, mum is out having a run in her ball. All of the babies have their eyes open and they are all steady on their legs.

When we reasemble the cage and returned Mitzy to the cage, the babies were all around the cage. One of the babies was in the tube... Mistzy rounded up the babies and took them back to the nest, she realised one was missing and searched the whole cage. The last place Mizty looked was in the tube, she nipped at the baby making it back up and fall down the upright. Once the baby had gotten to it's feet, it ran back to the nest before Mitzy could catch up!

18th Feb 05 - Munchies (again)

Babies - 16 days old. The babies can now get to all parts of their little world... they get to the food bowl by going along the tube. Some of the babies have found the water dispenser and use it occasionally, we have even seen baby 3 (the most adventurous) climbing the cage bars.

19th Feb 05 - Food.

The babies are 17 days old and around 60-65 mm long, amazing considering they were only conceived 41 days ago! We're going to have to sort out better feeding arangements for the babies, the orange food bowl was fine for just Mitzy, but now the babies are using the bowl, it's constantly empty.

19th Feb 05 - And more food!

The babies store food in their cheek pouches, and we've seen one of the babies burrowing into the wood shavings with full pouches and reappearing with empty pouches... presumably the babiy has a food stash under the shavings.

Later today we'll be weighing the hamsters again, and finding out which are boys & girls.

20th Feb 05 - A tube of babies!

Day 18: We didn't get to find the gender or wiegh the babies... family circumstances :(
All of the babies have found the tube... it can get quite congested!
The babies squeeze past each other inside the tube without too much difficulty, arguments start tho if there are two babies trying to get past another at the same time!

21st Feb 05 - Mum does this...

Day 19: Baby 3 again... the first one to climb the bars of the cage.

21st Feb 05 - Let me out!

Mitzy is trying to get out... maybe the space is getting too small for her and the babies.
We have homes for a couple of hamsters and the local pet shop is interested in the rest.
The babies will be ready to leave in a week or so.

We think Mitzy is weaning the babies... several times now when we have put milk into the metal bowl, Mizty promptly collects up some food, drops it in the milk and then covers the lot with wood shavings.

22nd Feb 05 - A bucket of babies.

Day 20: Well... we finally got to gender check the babies today.
See Babies, Day 20.
Catching the babies wasn't too hard. Most of them were in the tube... a simple mater of taking the whole tube of and dismantling it over the bucket.
The bucket had about 50mm (2") wood shavings and some food.

22nd Feb 05 - Where did they go?

Within 10 minutes, all of the babies had grabbed a bit of food each and buried themselves in the wood shavings.. a sign they're comfortable.