How much time out the cage does your hamster have?

[sandyballs]

I wonder if ours is bored as he sleeps so much. DDs tend to wake him about 6ish and they play with him for a while and he runs around the sofa and all over us. Then he might go in his ball for half an hour or so, are hamster balls cruel? Or is it good exercise?

When he's put back in his cage he will go back to bed.

Half hour in a ball is fine. No more than that a day is really recommended due to the strain on the back.

When I had my hamster I used to have a plastic stacking box which I half filled with wood shavings and put some toys in there, so a seesaw, a tunnel, chew sticks etc, although by far his favourite game was trying to escape the box!

If your dd is having to wake the hamster up to play with it I'm not sure it is ready to be awake which probably explains why it goes back to bed afterwards. My hamster used to wake up about 7:30-8 so waking it up at six may be the equivalent of waking us up at about 5/6 which we wouldn't exactly enjoy!

Also, female hamsters tend to be the more lazy of the two, tend to sleep a bit more than their male counterparts. As long as they're eating, drinking and well in themselves they could just be lazy!

Thanks sparkle, I think he is a bit lazy, loves his bed! Good idea about stacking box.

What size cage have you got? Just, most cages bought in shops are woefully small for hamsters, who do like to roam. I thought we had a large cage, until we bought our DDs the hamster heaven (which is only slighty larger than RSPCA minimum guidelines)

www.zooplus.co.uk/shop/small_pets/hutches_cages/hamster_cages/hamster_cages/197362

Since buying this cage, we've noticed our hamster is much happier, more active and chews her bars less.

Boredom is supposed to be quite a problem in hamsters (so I read)