My Promise

My children - To be forever missed by ur mommy....
Please wait for me at the Rainbow bridge. 
I shall join you all when my chores are through but I don't know how long they will take...

Silently night

May Baba live forever in peace as he crossed over the Rainbow Bridge to rejoin the rest of my hamsters.

My last living hamster that stayed with me since 26th Nov 2010.

Until death brings us apart, I cared for him as much as my heart can afford to.

Thank you for being here for 2 years 28days with me.

Pet abandoned! T,T

Seriously, it really saddens me to write this article.

My cousin nudge me over MSN on Monday night asking me to adopt a hammie in.

Based on her information, someone just abandon a hammie in a small cage measuring around 15cm long by 7cm wide by 10cm tall. The hammie looks dirty and thristy as there was no water source found in the tiny cage. Nor there was any form of bedding in the cage.

After much discussion with my cousin, she decided to adopt the hammie in althrough she had no prior experience in keeping hamsters. I truly salute her determination in her actions and wanted to support her as well. So I decided to give away one of my cage with some beddings and food to Kuro (my cousin's hammie).

 Kuro is a very young (under 3mths old), male Russian Winter White after a short inspection on Tuesday. Very alert enough to know that it is being abandoned but generally very friendly towards strangers.

What I suspected was that Kuro was purhcased from pet store by someone but the family object against pet raising and hence abandon Kuro along with the mini cage at the flat's lobby beside the rubbish collection area.

A lot of non-pet owners thinks that pet abandoning is easy.

But it is not true especially for the pets involved.

 Pets DO feel and DO understand that THEY ARE ABANDONED.

 My 1st hamster was also an abandoned hamster but I tried asking my neighbours and no one come forward and admit that they had missing hamster. Ah Girl was very fierce to me when I tried to touch her the 1st time round. I end up getting bitten while trying to feed her.

She was an old hamster, around the age of 1+ years old, with a bit of fur dropping off, hence her appearance wasn't the prettiest. I nursed her back to health and we spent a happy 1/2 year together before she passed away of old age.

It is never easy to gain the trust of abandon ones as they had be betrayed by someone who are supposed look after them for lifetime until death bring them apart.

So before you, as the reader of this blog, decided to get a new hamster,
please note that PETS ARE LIFETIME COMMITMENT.


Cherish your pets just as you would like to cherish your loved ones.

Our pets truly deserved every single love from you as much as any other living human beings.

 ~PEACE TO THE WORLD~

Passing away of Nan Sao

T,T This morning Nan Sao was still walking around her cage as usual but she left us for rainbow bridge while I was away for work.

May she live happily ever after with the rest of my family up at the rainbow bridge.

Darling, my little wild princess - you shall be always missed.

Types of bedings available for hamster

Time to settle for a serious article!
Sorry folks for my slacking and thank you for your patience on waiting for my article. Guess I need to come out with new articles over the weekend! Okay, to jump start the engine, I decide to do a "mini" topic on hamster bedding before moving on to more serious topics. I have decided to totally avoid the brands of bedding for non-commericalising purposes and just focus on the advantage and disadvantages only. Here goes:

What is a bedding?
A hamster bedding is a layer of material that you lay on your hamster's cage. Most common function of a hamster bedding is actually to absorb urine and freshen up the cage as most hamster owners only clean their hamsters and cages 1-2 times per week. Most of times, hamster owners buy hamster bedding commercially although DIY beddings are available.

• Normal Types of Bedding available on the market
• Wood Shavings/Chips
The most common bedding available on the pet stores are Wood Shaving/Chips. Wood shavings are generally softer than chips but there's quite a few drawbacks despite the affordability. Sometimes rough wood shavings/chips might give your hamster a splitter on its limbs and wood shaving/chips, by itself, doesn't absorb urine that well and give off awfully smell after 3-4days of changing cages especially with hamsters that tends to urine very often.

However, please by all means avoid the following wood bedding by all cost: Cedar/Pine. Despite the fact that both cedar and pine give off nice fragrance. They are known to give your hamsters health problem as well. This is a well known fact within the community of rat/hamster owners. In case, you need more information, I also added a link here that touches on the toxicity of these 2 wood bedding.

• Straw and/or Hay
Another affordable bedding will be straw/hay bedding. Both straw/hay bedding can be used for hamster bedding but there's a difference between both of them. Hay are generally grasses that are cut while it is still alive and straw is a byproduct. Hay can be used as a feeding material on its own as it still maintain the nutritious value while straw cannot be used as a feeding material. As hay can be served as a fresh food/bedding by itself, interaction with urine from hamsters will make it stink very fast.
• Corn Cob Bedding or similar
One of the most affordable bedding but with tons of disadvantages. Corn cob doesn't not do absorb urine and smell that well but is relatively one of the cheapest bedding available in the pet store. Generally corn cob bedding needs to be change more frequently as compare the the rest as corn cob bedding will turn mouldy pretty fast upon contact with moisture.
• Cat Litter or pelleted bedding
This is actually one of my favourite bedding due to the fact that pellated bedding can absord urine pretty well. There are quite a few pellets beddings out on the market with round or flat bedding being the 2 most common designs. However, pelleted bedding is well-known for its cost. 1 small bag of pelleted bedding is almost equivalent to a medium/large bag of wood shaving bedding depending on bands.
• Paper Pulp Bedding
Another favourite hamster bedding of mine! This paper pulp bedding is generally much softer/lighter than pelleted bedding and can control urine equally well. Paper pulp comes in large variety of colours andand turn yellowish in colour when in contact with urine. Personally I only like white bedding as I'm not sure if the colourful bedding available at the pet store are dye safe for hamster. However, its cost is equally matching to that of pelleted bedding or even higher, depending on the brands available.
• Wire Mash
Some of the cages have wire mash that comes with it. This really save quite a substantial amount of money for the bedding and hamster's urine and droppings are drop below leaving the hamster cleaner than normal bedding. However, one major drawback of wire mash is that your hamster have to stand/walk/sleep on the wire mash over a prolong period of time.
• DIY Bedding
•  Newspapers/Magazines
For hamster owners on shoes string budget, this is the cheapest DIY material available. However, most hamster website/owners/forums won't recommend this alternative due to the ink printing on the papers and hamsters might eat/chew on the newspapers.
Personally used it without much of an issue with my hamsters when I first started out rearing hamsters but there are 2 main drawbacks from my experience. 
Firstly, newspaper and magazines do not have good urine absorbtion properties, and turns pretty fast into pulp like materials upon contact with water.
Secondly, my hamsters love to dig tons of holes in my newspapers bedding and it is really hard to find them at times. There was once I had a pretty sick hamster and it went into digging mode and I have to unearth the entire bedding just to find him.
• Shredded papers
For folks who owns papershredder - you will love this method. All you do is stand in front of paper shredder and shred any amount of white/brown papers without ink for your hamster bedding! But this process is pretty daunting especially if your shredder is lite function by nature. Another point to note will be that papers don't absorb urine that well and frequent changing of bedding is recommended.
• Nesting Material
• Cotton
Hamster owners usually will give their hamsters additional material to bulit their nest and one of the most common material will be cotton. Most of commerical cotton from Pet Store are natural cotton.

However for hamster owners who are on shoes- string budget, I recommend another alternative of buying 100% facial unbleach cotton pads from non-pet store. So far i dont have any issues from hamsters using facial cotton pads as I make sure they are 100% natural and have minimium processing.

• Papers Material
Other types of DIY materials for nesting materials includes tissue papers, facial tissue, toilet papers and even paper towels can be used as nesting material for hamsters.

I love give my hamster, Baba, 1 piece of facial tissue after another after changing the cage bedding and nesting material. Baba seems to have so much fun pulling all the tissues into his home while remaking his nest.
• Bathing Sands
• Bathing sands are which a type of sands that help hamsters to get rid of its dirt/oil by rolling over the sand. Aside that, smarter hamsters can actually pee only in bathing sands while keeping the rest of the cage clean.
• Generally, bathing sands have 2 types of fineness - Coarse sand and Fine sand. Coarse sand are usually used for littering purpose white fine sand is used for hamster rolling purpose. 
• There are some type of coarse sand that will turn into lump upon contact with urine and these type of sands are the type that work best with hamsters that tends to urine a lot.
• Aside of the fineness of the sand, there are also tons of sand that are scented with various flavors like apple and rose! Personally, I perfer non-scented sand as I use cucumber flavour deorderizer for my hamster cage. ^^

In conclusion, I generally summarise almost all the beddings that are usually used in hamster cages. Generally, most hamster owners will weigh between comfort for hamster and cost while decide which bedding to get. Hope this super long article helps in understanding the different type of bedding available and help you in making a decision on type of bedding to use for your hamsters.

Do you know...

hamsters do recognise owners and traits?

 

My smarter hamsters can make their way home and learn to pee at certain spots in their cage i.e. sand bath. Very smart hamsters can even learn to beg for food and even know when their owners are back from school and work.

 

One of my current hamster - Baba, has learn that I wake up around 7.30am in the morning and will rotinuely give him his fav treat. He will walk around the front part of his cage every morning and wait for me before I go off to walk ^^,)//

 

Isn't that sweet of him?

Gosh its Friday!

Folks, are you ready to spend your weekend playing with your hamsters? ^^

Heard a sad news from my fellow hamster owner friend this morning

Read from her whatsapp that her hammie passed away yesterday morning.

May Nutnut be in peace with her family at rainbow bridge.

My friend seemed to be upset over her death which doesn't surprise me as she treat Nutnut as her very own daughter.

Nut Nut was a very curious hamham and love human interactions. I took care of her while my friend and her hubby went overseas for a 2 weeks vaccation. Her curious actions really makes me smile whenever I passed by her cage and she stood right in front of the door asking for attention.

Hope my friend can recover from the sadness soon :(

Back from Japan!

Hi Folks!

I'm back from Japan and have fun travelling F&E.

Anyway, I didn't managed to visit a pet store in Japan this time but managed to snap 2 very coolz dogs while at Harajuku ^^

A dog wondering around Harajuku with a tag labelling: "In midst of shopping".

Apparently, his owner is in the shop while he is trained to wait for his owner outside the shop. Coolz!

Took the snapshoot with permission from the owner while he is resting with his dog.

Do you know how to differentiate a Male and Female Hamsters...

Do you know that you can differentiate Male and Female hamster by checking their rear?

Mature adult male hamsters are very easy to differentiate by observing a large buttocks at the rear.

However, young hamsters are usually differentiate by inverting them around and check their private areas in between their hind legs.

Generally, baby/infant female pups have a shorter distance between the 2 holes spotted at their rear while baby/infant male pups have a longer distance between the 2 holes spotted at their rear.

This is usually done through experienced eyes as non-experienced people will have problem differentiate.

Passing away of Kaka

May he live happily with the rest of my disneyfamily in rainbow bridge.

For he who no longer knows pain after passing on to the bridge today 19/3/2012 1am.

My grief for him shall always be part of my strength to move forward stronger than ever.

Squeakers Box added!

Folks. new additional Squeakers box is added! Have fun!

Meet HamHam!

Hamster Pamper decide to adopt HamHam to accompany Hammie!  (^^,)//

Please find her above Hammie's cage!!!

Hamster Pedia

Hamster Pedia - information donated by the public for the public
Good new hamster information area spotted!

Saw this website accidently while browsing for some other information on Japanese stuff. All articles are written by the public for the public.

Super good website indeed!

I also add this into my More Squeaking links ^^,)

Hamsters & Birth

Cheese, I wish I didn't promised this article in my blog earlier as I truly do not encourage breeding of hamsters at all. Since it is my promise, I will share my information as a nurse/grandparent/mid-wife for my hamsters.

Recalling my first breeding experience
My first breeding experience incurred as a surprise to me one day in mid 2002 when my Polar give birth to 4 pups. I was feeding Ah Boy and Polar when I realised that there's some movement in the back of their hut. Taking out the hut, I saw 4 moving red "beans" in the cotton wool and screamed in delight. Being a teens back then, I have no idea how to take care of both the mother and the pups and went on touching the pups with my bare hands. Polar went nuts and refuse to feed the pups and I was scolded by my parents for touching the pups. Furious by the neglecting Polar and scared that that pups might die, I went online and search for tons of hamster pup care information....... such was rare back then as there's no such thing as well-known forum such Yahoo Answers nor detailed Wikipedia on hamsters.

Watching pup birth for the 1st time in my life during my early adult life
To give birth, the Mother hamster need a lot of strength and support to give birth the natural way without painkiller Seriously, seeing my one of mother hamsters in labour pain and the joy of live pups born in front of me, I truly understand what does it means being a grandparent of my hamster pups.....

Sorry for the side tracking of my past memories.

And here's a few tips of how to notice a pregnant hamster:

• Pregnant hamster tends to eat a lot and sleep a lot. 
• Pregnant hamster also tend to exercise slower than usual.
• Pregnant hamster (especially first-timer mother) tends to be in super grouchy mood if you want to carry it especially via tummy hold method. They tend to bite the holder most likely if you carry them this way. (Recommend : scoop/platform method)
• Pregnant hamster will have their tummy getting bigger especially towards their pregnancy is due soon.

As such, depending on the species of the hamsters that you have - I strongly recommend you to split your Father syrian/chinese hamster but Father drawf winter/robo/pudding hamsters are well-known to be remain within the cage and help Mother hamster with her pregnancy/pup raising.

Some hamsters are known to have delay their pregnancy but usual pregnancy period is around 21 days. Most pregnancy occurs during early hours of the morning or evening because that's the period where most hamsters are active.

Things to note during milking period of the pups:

• Try moving the cage to a darker/quieter location of the house so that both Mother/pups will not be stress out.
• Avoid touching both Mother hamster and pups for the touch 2 weeks. 
• Pups will open their eyes around their 10th day.
• Give nutritional food to Mother hamster to ensure she have enough milk to feed her pups especially if her litter is big. 
• Food to consider : Hard boil eggs, milk, cheese, butter, sunflower seeds. 
• Only clean the toilet section of the cage and leave the rest of the cage untouched whereas possible
• Most pups will only wean (milk-free) from 14-21 days. 
• I strongly recommend only separate from Mother hamster after the pups have fully gone to solid food in order to have healthy pups. I realised that most pups sold at pet stores/ online are not properly wean and hence hand feeding is still required when needed. Improper weaning will result in unhealthy hamster.
• Only touch pups who have wean properly. However should one require to take the pups out due to some emergencies, use a spoon or something similar to gently scoop out the pups.
• The moment if there's any fighting between Father hamster and almost weaned pups, separation of Father hamster is required so that the pups will be safe as Father hamster have the tendency to kill young male pups and rape young female pups to ensure that he is the King of the community.

For pups abandoning by Mother hamster: please refer to this article : Abandoned hamsters pups helpline

Remarks : I will try to touch on a sensitive topic on breeding before my trip to Japan by end of the Mar.

Mother Hamster Abandoning Hamsters Pups! Helpline!

Chances of mother hamsters abandoning pups are normal due to a few facts such as:

• Mother hamster is too weak by nature so she cannot raise her pups by herself.
• Mother hamster is in distress / uncomfortable with the surrounding as in too much noise/movement around the cage.
• Someone/some other animals have rub their scents onto the pups. Hence mother hamster cannot recognise the pups as her own.
• Pups are deemed too weak to raise. Hence it is better for the mother hamster to give up on the pups and nurse herself health back.

Hence I recommend the following steps hoping to salvage the situation.

• Feed the Mother hamster with tons of calcium and nutritional food like cheese, butter, milk and sunflower seeds (PLEASE NOTE in MODERATION.)
• Try moving the cage to a quieter location and partial cover the cage with a cloth to avoid sun rays/lightings.
• When feeding Mother hamster, avoid touching the pups for the 1st 2weeks as they are not wean (milk-free) from their Mother as such. If one really requires to touch the pups, use a plastic spoon and scoop the pups out gently.

If all situation fails, then one can consider the following options:

• Find a adoptive Mother hamsters for the abandon pups. Chances for this to work is low unless the adopting Mother is very gentle temper in nature and can take care of pups other than her own. (Not recommend for Syrian Hamsters as Syrian Hamsters are super territorial by nature)
• Be a nurse yourself. Usually for me, I can safely say that pups that are 2 weeks old have good chances to survive on their own as they are almost going to be wean free from their Mother hamster.
• As such, do the following things : check if their eyes are open.
• If yes, try feeding them solid food and see the response of the pups. If they can chew the solid food, they are safe. Lower the water bottle to their neck level so that they can drink the water bottle.
• If not, prepare a dropper (those used for eye drops and can be purchased from pharmacy easily). Take small dosage of milk ie few drops - (room temperature milk or lukewarm milk) and gently drop 1 drop by 1 drop by the pup's mouth. It won't be easy and requires tons of patience as the pups might be scared of foreign objects near them.

Hope that you may never read this article as reference as this means that your Mother hamster had just abandon her pups.