Hamster Babies!!!

[angel_eyes0857]

well if anyone has read my old topics, i had..well, my hamster had, 11 baby hamsters. we purposely bred them. we had a few personal homes for them and the petstore was going to take any that we couldn't find homes for. we were curious about the development..la la la.. anyway that went great. it was absolutely incredible seeing the hamsters grow up. well when we were left with about 7 more hamster babies...we had some people back out of wanting them, and the petstore manager was gone. they were starting to fight and i was getting scared that they were going to kill each other...
well everything went ok. we managed to get rid of some more and then we had two left. we decided to keep one for ourselves and the last one we gave to the petstore. we later found out (probably about last week sometime) that some of the females that we gave away had babies... one of them, ate all of her young. im not sure about another...and one had birth to 7 and as far as i know, she is raising them. The one we gave to the petstore, looked rather huge!! we kept a female too so we were getting worried.
my boyfriend went downstairs last ngiht (i wasnt there, i was at my own home) last night to clean out the baby females cage (only 1 female, and she was born june 9th-it is now august 16) and he seen BABIES!!!!! he is not sure how many!!! but the little thing had babies!!! so the obvious reason why they were all fighting, was because the males were getting their freak on and the girls were already pregnant...

is this going to be horrible to keep the babies? If she doesn't eat them, we are definately going to let her raise them, and as soon as they stop nursing off her, and eat on their own, we are giving them to the petstore. as soon as they are ready, so no more incidences like this happen. They are obviously inbred hamsters, is anything going to be wrong with them???

please help me!!!!!!!!!! I am also moving in 2 weeks, i will be home evry now and then but my boyfriend will be here to take care of them... he's like "man, we just got rid of 10, now we got more"

who knows, they might even be gone once we get home today... but we'll see. I have no problem letting the mommy/baby raise her babies, but once they are old enough, they are gone... this was 100% unexpected.

help! opinions! suggestions! more than welcome! thanks!

 

[mandi]

What kind of hamsters are they? (Dwarf, golden, teddy-bear, black-bear, etc.?)

My boyfriend and I had the same problem with a pair of siberian dwarf hamsters a couple years ago. When we bought them, the salesperson assured us they were two females -- after a few days of having them at home, we discovered they sure as heck weren't!!

At one point, we had 40 hamsters -- no joke. And I felt horrible. We spent a small fortune on cages, trying to separate them. The worst part was, although there's lots of petstores in town, none would take them because at that point, everywhere was overrun with siberan dwarves, and no one was buying them.

What helped for us was posting ads on the bulletin-boards at Petsmart and Petco. We gave them away for free (to good homes) and thankfully we found some great homes for the little fuzzies (we had quite a few pure-white ones -- some albino and some with dark eyes, so they were easier to find homes for).

The only side-effect I noticed was that some of them were very very mean, though I'm not sure whether that was a result of inbreeding or because of less direct-handling (it's tuff to keep up when there's 40 running around) -- and siberan dwarves are known for being a little more rambunctious and hard to handle compared to full-size hamsters anyway. We wound up keeping the unfriendly ones till they passed away because I didn't have the heart to try and get someone to take them. My boyfriend's mom still has 3 of them, but that's all thats left now.

It certainly cured me for ever buying hamsters in pairs ever again though.

 

[shawy]

Your lucky, a couple of years ago mine was pregnant, and the night before she was going to have them she died

 

[angel_eyes0857]

wow.. thats sad

my mommy and daddy from the first bunch are perfect. we have a cage for the mom, cage for the dad, cage for the baby that just had babies. heck, i havent even had time to enjoy the baby that we kept, haven't even picked her up yet cause we just finally got rid of the last female two nights ago and then just with work schedules its been too busy. so now she has babies. im going to go over soon to make sure she didnt eat them or what not.
they are regular hamsters, otherwise known as syrian hamsters i THINK. well... hope that everything will be ok...

sigh

 

[Never2Bknown]

They should be ready to go to the petstore by five weeks. I believe that's when they start breeding, but I'm not sure, so if they're ready, you may want to give them away at four weeks.

Inbreeding may cause your babies to be weak and/or sickly. Sometimes they don't grow as well, either. Babies that are way too inbred (yours shouldn't be--if they breed with eachother, their babies might) sometimes die not long after they're born, so be careful.

Good luck!!