Dusty the Robo dwarf hamster.

[Dusty's Mom]

Hello, my name is Connie and we live in Phoenix, AZ. We got our little guy March 20th. He is so cute. He is currently settling into his new home.
Eventually I would like to get him a larger home, but for now I think he is happy. I will try to post a picture on him. Hope I did it correctly. Thanks for
letting me join. I look forward to learning more about the care of hamsters.

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[Socks' Mum]

Hello Dusty, you are such a cutie Love your little house! Welcome to the forum!

 

[Dusty's Mom]

Thank you, Socks Mum, for the warm welcome!

 

[RainbowBrite]

Hello and welcome to the forum. Dusty is adorable!

 

[Socks' Mum]

Hello, my name is Connie and we live in Phoenix, AZ. We got our little guy March 20th. He is so cute. He is currently settling into his new home.
Eventually I would like to get him a larger home, but for now I think he is happy. I will try to post a picture on him. Hope I did it correctly. Thanks for
letting me join. I look forward to learning more about the care of hamsters.

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Just seen your video, aw, he looks very happy!

 

[Maz]

Hello and welcome What a gorgeous little Robo. He looks quite curious.

 

[elusive]

Hello & welcome to the forum.
Dusty is adorable & that’s a lovely video of him exploring his cage.

 

[Coco61]

Welcome to the forum. Lovely to have another robo to get to know.

 

[Daisy]

Hello and welcome to the forum! I believe I know you from The Gerbil Forum (where I'm LilyandDaisy). So nice to see you over here with Dusty, who is adorable

 

[Dusty's Mom]

Thanks to everyone's warm welcome here. Oh, LilyandDaisy, yes I am at the Gerbil Forum too! When I moved my gerbils to the larger cage my granddaughter wanted to use the other cage for a hamster so we got Dusty. He is getting settled. I am new to keeping a hamster too. So much learning to be done. The differences between keeping hamsters and gerbils is fun to learn. Dusty found his way up to the topper and got a drink last night so that was a big relief. He has yet to try his 8 inch wheel and sand bath, but he will get there. Had to change his ladder from a wire one to a wooden one so he was more comfortable going up to the topper. I had never heard of dwarf hamsters before this year. They are very cute. Going to fix him up a digging box too. So fun!

 

[RainbowBrite]

You may like to have a look at this page of set ups if you are looking for any ideas.

Show us your cages 2023 onwards

A new thread for 2023 to show cage set ups :) Some may have changed or be new but feel free to add your existing set up again. It's mainly so all current ones are viewable in the same place.

thehamsterforum.com

 

[Frida]

Hello and welcome to the forum
Dusty is gorgeous

 

[Maz]

With you mentioning a topper, I just wondered if it was quite a tall cage? Hamsters do better with more floor space and less height as they can fall but there can be ways of making a taller cage workable.

 

[Dusty's Mom]

You may like to have a look at this page of set ups if you are looking for any ideas.

Show us your cages 2023 onwards

A new thread for 2023 to show cage set ups :) Some may have changed or be new but feel free to add your existing set up again. It's mainly so all current ones are viewable in the same place.

thehamsterforum.com

Thanks I will

 

[Dusty's Mom]

With you mentioning a topper, I just wondered if it was quite a tall cage? Hamsters do better with more floor space and less height as they can fall but there can be ways of making a taller cage workable.

This cage I have now is 30 X 12 X 12 with a full 11 inch topper. I am learning it is small for a hamster. I know topper space doesn't count and I would love to have a large floor space for him, but I will have to figure that out as the space in my house is limited. Right now the topper is where his water, food, sand bath and wheel are. I know I can sprinkle the food over the bedding which is nice. We have just purchased a maze box to put in there and maybe I could get a water bottle stand to set on that. But there is no space for a wheel in this cage unless we divide it up with a burrowing half and a half with very little bedding for the wheel. Or take part of the floor of the topper off and get a stand for the wheel to sit on. But that would limit his burrowing space. We have to figure the best way to give him what he needs with what we have at the moment. Here is a picture of his cage. You can see our gerbil tank and topper behind it. I have his new maze box sitting on top of the cage ready to put in after he settles in to his new home.

Thank you so much for your input and help with us and caring for Dusty. I so much appreciate it.

 

[Maz]

Do you have a lid for the tank? I think for now it would be better to remove the topper and have the wheel and other items in the glass tank part and just use the glass tank. The floor of the topper seems to be mesh and that can give hamsters bumblefoot, so the alternative is to cover the mesh floor with something. Cardboard would do

 

[Dusty's Mom]

Thanks, yes the floor is mesh and we were thinking it would need to be covered. Or use the floor as the cover for the tank and block the small opening that allows the ladder up to the topper. We could try to fit everything into the tank and see how that works. Thanks for the advice and I didn't know about bumble foot. So if we do that, fit it all down into the tank, how deep should the bedding be in the burrowing part of the tank?

 

[elusive]

Ideally you want about 30 cm of substrate over the whole base, if that isn’t possible you could just try to add more under the house so he can burrow down & nest but they do tend to burrow across quite a large area.

 

[Maz]

Keeping the topper as a roof sounds an idea If you could fit 25cm of substrate in it would be good. My robo had 25cm of substrate - they really love burrowing and digging tunnels. As Elusive says it's better to have the same depth of bedding in the whole cage, but if the tank isn't tall enough for very deep bedding then 20cm to 25cm would be ok. It looks like you have about 25cm already - so presumably the wheel wouldn't fit in that case.

As long as the top part is easily accessible, then it might be better to use the topper with the floor covered and keep the wheel up there. If you could put some kind of shelf or bendy bridge over the entrance to the exit/entrance in the top part. The reason for this is, if the hamster did happen to climb the top bars right to the top of the cage and drop, they couldn't fall too far and down the exit hole.

As he's just settling in, it might be better to leave things as they are and make the topper hamster-proof For now. Assuming he can get up the ramp ok to the top? They are pretty agile little things, robos. You might not see him doing much at the moment, but he'll be pretty active at night.

Do you have a babycam/nightcam? I have one I used to use with our robo and it was great seeing what he got up to at night.

 

[Dusty's Mom]

Ideally you want about 30 cm of substrate over the whole base, if that isn’t possible you could just try to add more under the house so he can burrow down & nest but they do tend to burrow across quite a large area.

Well this tank is about 28cm deep and that would leave room for nothing else. You say add more under the house. Is there no danger of them burrowing under the house and the house falling in on them? I know with my gerbils if I put something on top of their bedding it will eventually sink down to the bottom of the tank. I am in such a learning curve right now. Thank you for everything!