Page-3

Feeding

Hamsters will eat just about anything you give them. To live healthily and happy feed them a normal hamster mix and some vegetables and fruit once a week. Too much vegetables will give any hamster the diarrhoea. Any other food such as egg, bread etc... and any chew sticks or blocks are treats. Avoid feeding any hamster to excess.

Breeding

Dwarfs will begin to breed at approximately two and a half months, sometimes even a little earlier. At 4-5 months they are mature enough to handle a litter, if you let them breed earlier than this it will result in infantile deaths of the young due to immaturity of the mother.
You must realise that if you decide to breed your hamster, as soon as the female has delivered her young, if the male remains she will get pregnant again. The gestation period for the female is 18-21 days. They will continuously breed litter after litter, but somehow the hamsters know when to take a break. Personally I don't let any female have more than two litters after each other as it becomes exhausting, and many problems have occurred in some of the females.

For a nursing mother she will need food with protein in to sustain her, and keep her milk flowing, so we then feed her milk soaked with bread, chicken, extra sunflower seeds, veg and fruit.
As soon as the female has her young, if she has any undue stress she will kill the litter, (eg. noise) Sometimes the weakest of the litter the runts will be killed within the first few days and the mother may eat her weakest. At 14 days old the babies should be eating on there own, and have there eyes open.So at 14-16 days old if the mother trusts you she will let you clean her cage out. It must be emphasised, do NOT clean the cage before 16 days old. At 3-4 weeks you can separate the young from the female, separating them into sexes, and at 6-8 weeks they will be ready for new homes.

Homepage
hamworld1
Page-4
Page-5
Breeders
Links
judge training