Cage size for dwarf hamster?

My friend is getting a dwarf hamster only one because her friends one had babies (pet shops again:roll and all the others are promised to someone else. Anyways she's wondering what size the cage should be? And what to look out for ect, just wondering if anyone has any ideas or better yet pictures for her? Thanks :wave:

Hi.

I had hamsters when i was younger, and found that my dwarf hamster had a LOT more energy than any of the others i had! So a decent size is needed, just because theyre smaller doesnt mean they should have smaller cages! The size depends on how much room you have really, like with rabbits the bigger the better.

I had rotastack cages at one point, my advise is DONT get them, i had two different hamsters escaping from them, one opened the door, one managed to unscrew the bedding lid by chewing in the air vents and must have twisted it. I had to use tape on all the joins to make sure it stayed on! Plus, dwarfs cannot easily go up the tubes, so need the added ladders, which can easily fall off. Other brands of connecting cages be carefull of too, as dwarf hamsters cannot grip into vertical tubes, so avoid these unless they will be connected by horizontal tubes only.

Because of these problems, for my dwarf, i had a very high cage, with multiple levels joined by tubes, but they were curved with grips made for dwarfs, but many others used ladders that clip on securly. Iv just had a look to find a similar cage, but cant really find any, this is the closest to what i had

http://www.ukpetsupplies.com/Details.aspx?ProdId=2963&CatId=245&ParentId=175

Mine had the base, and then 3 extra tiers either side, so in the middle taller toys could fit. The main thing is to make sure a good quality wheel is available, mine spent most of its time on that and ignored many of its other toys. I had one with a plastic base like this, it was deep so sawdust didnt scatter anywhere, and the rest was wire. I found the hamsters i had liked wire cages as it stopped them getting too hot, and they also LOVED climbing up the bars, which they cannot do in plastic cages.


Heres an example of one that does have vertical tubes, but they seem to be gripped which allows the dwarf to get up ok. I THINK it looks like you can join more cages to this if your friend wanted to buy add ons, and looks a lot more stable than rotastak cages.

http://www.feedem.co.uk/small-anima...ges-134/ferplast-crittertrail-hamster-470.htm

It all depends on the size of where your friend can put it, i chose a tall one so the hamster could have lots of space using multiple levels rather than one level, but if your friend has the space a single storey/ 2 storey cage with a bigger base area does the job fine.

This is just my personal opinion though, others may think rotastack is great (i did before i used them and had escaping hamsters, but once i taped it all together it was fine and the hamsters seemed happy. And ladders for vertical bits wont be needed if its connected by horizontal tubes, but it does take a lot of space up). It is just personal choice, and like i said, my dwarf spent most of its time on the wheel that it probably would have been fine in some of the bog standard small cages. Just remember it needs an area to sleep, a wheel, food and drink, and litter corner as a minimum, and extra toys take up extra space, so work out what size theyd want based on that.

Hope that helps.

Dwarf hamsters are escape artists and can get through small gaps - so I'd recommend a very large tank with lid with ventilation slits.

yes i agree. All my dwarf are in plastic type cages, with only the lid being metal, as they can squeeze through gaps.

I had loads of hamsters when I was little. I usually had the syrian ones but i had a dwarf called Toffee for my birthday when I was about 11, 2 days later she escaped from my wire cage and i never saw her again (we suspect she went down a hole under the floor in my kitchen as the cat would never have eaten her as she was too old to be bothered with such things). The next lot of dwarfs we got we put in a rotastack cage and they were fine, from what i remember though we had the cage flat so the tubes were horizontal on a table. One of the hammies had babies (got her pregnant from the pet shop again! we thought she was a bit fat!). The other hammy seemed fine in a wire cage though when we separated her from the mum and babies...think that might have had smaller bars though.