 |
Care of a Pregnant Hamster
If you end up with a mother-to-be in your hamster cage, you may have no clue what to do! Don’t worry, help is here. From start to finish, here is your beginner’s guide to caring for a pregnant hamster. As I'm sure you can see - this is a very new section of useful information on how to care for your pregnant hamster. Please bear with us while we make it look as good as the rest of our site! We will be adding in useful pictures and some fun products - bookmark this page so you can come back and check us out. Better still, access our RSS feed so you don't miss out on a single thing to do with caring for your pregnant hamster!
Your hamster (whether it is a Syrian or a dwarf) should be around three months old at the time of mating. A mother who is too young may not produce enough milk, or be so stressed by the experience that she ends up killing her offspring. Retire your hamster from breeding by the time she is a year old -- some older hamster mothers never recover from the strain of giving birth. Keep in mind that your hamster’s life span is only between two and three years! A female hamster can go into heat every week and be ready to mate! Certain signs will tell you that she is ready to mate: she may tense her body or go stiff when a male is nearby. You may want to let your male and female hamsters have a chance to get to know each other before the actual act of mating -- let them play in the same area while in separate hamster balls. When mating time arrives, put them together in a neutral place and keep an eye on them. Separate them if they seem to be fighting, but otherwise let nature take its course. Is My Hamster Pregnant? It may not be easy to tell whether or not your mating was a success just by looking. You may notice changes in behavior more readily! Look for these signs: She begins hoarding more food than usual She begins reconditioning her nest -- lining it with fresh, soft padding She may seem more nervous or jumpy She may build a second nest -- a birthing area outside the enclosed sleeping area Her growth increases quickly Her stomach looks lumpy If you do believe you have a pregnant hamster on your hands, make sure she has plenty of nesting material available. Be very gentle when handling her, and don’t let strangers disturb her. Keep the room quiet, and don’t mess with her nest! Give your mom-to-be a diet rich in protein and vitamins so she’ll be strong for giving birth. Syrian hamsters have a gestation period of approximately sixteen days. Dwarf hamsters have a slightly longer gestation period -- approximately twenty days. The Babies Are Coming! The average litter size varies between the two types of hamster. Syrian hamsters may have between six and ten babies; dwarf hamsters may have five or six babies in a litter. But your hamster may have as many as sixteen babies or more! Sometimes, a female hamster may show signs of being pregnant but never give birth. This may happen for one of two reasons: it may be a phantom pregnancy (not an actual pregnancy) or she may be unable to give birth. A hamster who is unable to give birth will normally reabsorb the babies back into her system with no ill effects. A female hamster who has either a phantom pregnancy or reabsorbs a litter may go on to successfully bear a litter in the future. It is rare for a hamster to give birth to dead babies, but it can sometimes happen. Try to remove any dead babies without touching the mother or any living children -- a long spoon may be useful. However, the mother may eat the dead bodes herself; the protein can help strengthen her after giving birth. A female hamster may also eat her own babies if she is too young to be bred and is too immature to cope with raising her litter. A female hamster may also destroy sickly babies or try to cut down a large litter to a more manageable size. If your mother hamster is ignoring her babies, you don’t have to worry right away. She will leave the nest for periods of time but should return to nurse the babies. If a female totally abandons her litter, you may need to try fostering them with another female hamster or hand rearing them. It may be next to impossible to hand-rear a baby hamster that is less than ten days old, and fostering can be difficult before fourteen days of age. After giving birth, give momma hamsters at least six weeks vacation so she can regain her strength. Please don’t overbreed your hamster -- six litters is the maximum number suggested by experts. Two or three litters will be more than enough for your female hamster to handle in a lifetime. Don’t forget to bookmark this page so you can come back as often as you need to. You can also subscribe to my Perfect Pets Blog so you have all the newest updates brought directly to you. You can do this simply by clicking on the little orange RSS button in the highlighted light green box along the left margin of this page - and following the directions from there.
Also do not miss the other useful articles available to you – check out the links at the bottom of this page for free information and help with all your pet queries and concerns.
Click here to discover what to look for when choosing your hamster Click here to find out about different hamster breeds Click here for help and advice on choosing general hamster care Click here to return from Caring for a Pregnant Hamster to our Home Page
|
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Technorati
Y! MyWeb
