How to Take Care of a Hamster

New Hamster Care Tips

Before you decide to Bring a new hamster into your home from a pet store or breeder, you should familiarize yourself with a bit of information on caring for new hamsters. By knowing a few important rules and understanding a few tips on new hamster care, you will be able to set you and your hamsters up for success. In short, these hamster handling tips will help make your new hamster transition from its old home at the pet store to its new hamster habitat at your house with as little stress on it as possible.

Often new pet owners don’t get educated on how to take care of a hamster that they just bought. That’s not to say that a lot of reputable pet stores won’t give you some tips on getting your new pet home and into it’s new cage. None the less, if you are reading this before you have gone out and purchased any new hamsters, take note in the following rules. If you have already purchased your hamster, you can still use these rules going forward.

Get a New Hamster Home from the Pet Store

Depending on where you go to buy your hamsters, they will no doubt provide a small pet carrier to help you transport your little guy home. However, these might be adequate and end up being stressful on your new pet hamsters. In addition, these boxes might be fairly easy for a hamster to gnaw its way through, especially through the air holes. The last thing you want is a runaway hamster underneath your brake pedal or the seats of your car. If this is a concerned to you, take a long a sturdy cardboard box and add some air holes on the top; then place the smaller pet carrier inside it. This will give you a second line of defense.

Tips for Traveling with Hamsters

• Put a bit of the hamsters’ bedding from it’s old cage into your temporary hamster carrier. The familiar scents will put them at ease.
• Once your new pet is in the temporary travel carrier, go directly home and get your hamster into it’s new home.
• Do not play loud music or have loud conversations in the car ride home. Hamsters get stressed by loud noises.
• Don’t try to take you hamster out and hold it on the way home or hold up the box to look at it. This is also stressful
• Keep the hamster out of bright light or direct sunlight. Hamsters by nature don’t venture out in broad daylight.

Let a Hamster Adjust to its New Living Space

When you transfer your hamster from its carrier into its new habitat, you might want to try using gloves to pick up the hamster and set it into its new cage. A better options is to place the carrier into the cage, open the carrier top and let your hamster crawl out on its own. This option is only available if you have a cage or habitat that has an opening wide enough to put the carrier in through. What ever option you go with, keep in mind the level of stress it will have on a hamster and try to keep that to a minimum.

Once your hamster is in its new home, let it be. It will need a day or two to get familiar and comfortable with its new living conditions. It’s best to let it explore all the spaces in its new habitat on its own pace. This is a stressful time on hamsters and this stress can lead to an illness or a shortened lifespan.  

During this time you should NOT do any of the following:

• Don’t change anything in the cage other than filling up the food dish  and water bottles. This would only ad to more confusion and stress.
• Don’t try to pick up your hamster or take it out of its cage and certainly don’t chase it around trying to catch it to pick up.
• Keep loud noises and distractions to a minimum. See Hamster Cage Location for more information on this.

When to Start Handling Your New Hamster

Hamsters need to be trained at a young to be held. It’s at this time that they are most responsive to learning new things. See How to Hold a Hamster for all the tips and tricks on  holding a hamster and when the best time to do so is.

photo by: stoichiometry
Author: Tim Winter

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