Syrian Hamster - Bedding, Smells & Chewing

[harryandmarv]

Our female Syrian hamster is around 6 months old, well we’ve had her for about 6 months. She’s always been a chewer, at cage, bars mainly. A while back she began chewing in the water bottle spout, like really gnawing at it, I noticed her bedding was getting really wet & her ‘toilet’ was like a river. I moved the bottle & this seemed to do the trick, she stopped. Until about a week ago, she started again. Now it doesn’t matter where I put her bottle, she just chews on the spout & her bedding it soaked again along with the toilet as I guess she’s taking in too much water. But she also stinks, her wee smell is really really pungent!

We use wood shavings for the base of her cage & torn up kitchen roll for her bedding. I’ve seen that Carefresh (multicoloured) bedding stuff at PAH & wondered if that may be better, it’s pricey, but does it hold odours or something? As regards to her chewing on her water bottle spout I don’t know what to do! I’m running out of places to put it! She’s not bored, we get her out everyday & she has lots of things in her cage. She recently took to moving all her bedding into her tube to sleep in there. She seems to eat, sleep, poo & wee in the same place!

Hmm we had many hamsters over the years, one was just a bit grubby happy to sleep in a bed (the coloured stuff) along with her wee and poo. The others were pretty good and did their wee in a separate area, we had one of those rotastak cages and we used a peat free compost for the wee area, didn’t smell and they loved digging about in it. Wood shavings in the other chambers.

Has she got a sand bath? She’d be cleaner with one (although she might also use it as a potty!

Ours loves his sand bath and only wees in that. He has a huge cage with about 6” of carefresh which is expensive but doesn’t need to be changed too often. It’s great stuff and they love burrowing in it.

Some hamsters develop a fixation with chewing water bottles which it sounds like might be going on here. I would suggest switching to a bowl for a little while. You'll have to put it on some kind of platform so it doesn't get filled with bedding. Make sure it's not too deep.

Chewing bars is usually down to stress or something wrong with the cage or the wheel. Make sure she has a big enough wheel (28cm wide) and plenty of space and several inches of bedding to burrow in.

Also make sure she has a nice big house to sleep in. Hamsters like to sleep in one corner of their house, pee in another and hoard in another. If their house is too small, all those activities happen in the same place and the nest gets yucky and smelly. A big enough house will probably also fix the sleeping in the tube too. They usually sleep in the tubes when they don't like any of the other sleeping options.

How big is her cage? Female Syrians are often unhappy with cages less than 100cm by 50cm. I’d definitely change the sawdust to carefresh or “kaytee clean and cozy” bedding (very soft and holds burrows well) and make sure at least some of the cage has this bedding at least 6” deep. 28cm wheel as mentioned by pp is the size a Syrian needs. Pet shops often give the wrong advice and sell cages and wheels that are too small. Hopefully this will stop her chewing the bars and water bottle which sounds like a stress reaction. The strong smell you mention is probably when she’s in heat which is every 3 days or so for female Syrian hamsters.
If you’re on Facebook I really recommend joining a hamster Facebook group such as “Hamsters UK” which will have lots of info and links to the minimum suggested cages if you need to upgrade yours.

Thanks everyone for your replies.
We have the Savic Hamster Haven Cage (i think that's what its called). Its actually her second cage as the first one, a different one she chewed holes in it!
We purchased some of that carefresh stuff. We have now attached the green house on top of the cage which comes with the cage, we took it off as she was able to push open the flap bit, but we've managed to secured it with a bit of string and tie it, so she can't escape and she's moved a lot of the carefresh stuff in there and seems settled. She's filled her tube with it too at one end, I'm guessing and it may sound daft but it could be to stop any draft getting in, like closing the door to her bedroom!
It's been few days since we gave her cage a thorough clean and I can't say it smells as bad, maybe just a faint smell coming through now, probably from her green house at the top where she sleeps. I'll give it a semi clean later today. I've heard they don't like their bedding changed too often.
We also go her some of the chew bars that dangle from the cage, she loves them and doesn't stop until she's destroyed them!
She loves the Whimzees dog chews (small ones) as well.
I have to say, we've had a Russian Dwarf before and a Roborovski and they're all different in their ways. Both the Russian and Robo never chewed on the bars, mind you the cage was different, more plastic than bars then. But they all made/make lovely pets and had/have their own little personalities.

Also make sure she has a nice big house to sleep in. Hamsters like to sleep in one corner of their house, pee in another and hoard in another

That's what our male Syrian does. We're lucky as he's very clean. He will pee in one corner of the green sleep house but only after it's been cleaned! He has 2 sand baths and he uses that as a toilet too.

Pet shops often give the wrong advice and sell cages and wheels that are too small

We have found this exactly. First the cage was too small so we returned it and they were good at refunding. Then another person suggested a saucer instead of a wheel but he was way too big so we returned that too! We got him a massive wheel which takes up alot of room but he loves it and it was well worth the money.