Starting out with your first pet hamster will require you to gather some basic essential items necessary for the little critters’ health, safety and well-being. After the initial cost of the hamster, you will have to spend about $25 to $50 for a suitable cage. If you are raising Syrian hamsters, you’ll need one cage per hamster. If you have dwarf hamsters, they can live in pairs, but if they aren’t a same sex couple you’ll have a lot more dwarf hamsters very soon.
A wire hamster cage or a ten-gallon aquarium with a wire-mesh top are both suitable hamster habitats. The larger, more expensive cages with tubes, tunnels and hiding chambers are nice but more difficult to clean. A good rule of thumb is to get the biggest cage you can afford and fit into your home. The cage should be located out of direct air drafts and lined with absorbent bedding such as hay, aspen bark, shredded paper or pelleted bedding. Do not use pine or cedar chips for hamster bedding, as their odors can be harmful to hamsters.
Hamsters love to exercise and play, and a running wheel for each hamster in your cage is a must. Hamsters also prefer to sleep and hide inside tight spaces like small boxes and cups. You can make crawl tubes for your hamster to crawl through out of empty cardboard tubes from paper towel rolls or purchase commercial crawl tubes from a pet store. Your hamster will not care how much his exercise equipment cost.
Hamster’s nutritional needs are easily met with commercially packed hamster mixes that contain a blend of various seeds, grains, cracked corn and nutrient pellets.
You can supplement your hamster’s food mix with fresh foods like grains, sunflower seeds, nuts, alfalfa pellets, fresh fruits and vegetables like bits of lettuce, carrots and apples. Clean your hamster’s food dish regularly and don’t leave old food sitting in it for so long that it begins to spoil. Several types of foods can be harmful to your hamster. Never give your favorite rodent kidney beans, onions, raw potato, rhubarb, chocolate or sweet candy. Your hamster’s thirst is best quenched with an inverted-style hanging water bottle with a drinking tube. Clean the container regularly to keep the water supply clean and your hamster will thank you.
Your pet hamster will need something to gnaw on in his cage too, as hamsters have very sharp teeth that grow continually and need to have something to help keep them clean and strong. Many people give their hamsters pieces of hard cat or dog biscuits as chew treats, but a clean piece of wood or twig will also do the job.
Overall, raising hamsters is an inexpensive proposition. The cage is under $50, food for one hamster for a year will cost about $50 too. Supplemental toys and treats will be about $20 a year and the most expensive stuff you will have to obtain will be the litter and bedding materials at around $200 a year. Your total maintenance costs will probably be well under $350 for a full year of hamster fun. And that’s a bargain.
Hamster Basics
* Wire or plastic cage – the larger the better.
* Hamster bedding materials.
* Litter materials.
* Small boxes for nesting and sleeping enclosures.
* One exercise wheel for each hamster.
* Quality hamster food mix.
* Inverted water bottle.
* Hamster chew toys or biscuits.
* Crawl tubes – homemade or commercial.
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