All About Hamster Diet: Hygiene, Family & Diseases

All about hamster diet: hygiene, family & diseases

Hamsters are top-of-the-line pets, especially as the children's first pet. Its temperament and clam nature is typically claimed to be liable for its popularity. They are very small creatures. Children can easily handle them and the element of fear would never exist because of the size of the rodent. Here is information about the hamster diet, hygiene, family & diseases.

Photo by Jie Wang on Unsplash

Diet

Hamsters are omnivores, and like all other creatures to maintain a healthy life they need a notorious and balanced diet. Below is the list of certain items that Hamster is likely to enjoy the most. Vegetables and Fruit seeds are what they enjoy the most, especially sunflower seeds and peanut seeds. But the ratio of their intake of food needs to be regular. These items especially sunflower seeds carry a lot of fat and too much consummation. Which can cause obesity, especially in dwarf hamsters; so 3-5 pieces a day is enough.

Since Dwarf Hamsters know as “Russian Hamsters”. It is important to mention that they are prone to diabetes. So you have to avoid giving vegetables and fruits with a high level of glucose; such as bananas, mangos, and carrots, etc.

Vegetables are also a favorite of hamster and they love Broccoli; lettuce is what they also like and carrot is what that gives them something to chew at; so they are fond of this as well but always wash it before serving it to your hamster.

Some of the common vegetables you should be giving to your hamster.

1.Peas

2.Zucchini

3.Corn

4.Turnip

5.Cucumber

6.Chestnut

7.Walnut

Don’t freak out if you see hamster eating their feces; hamsters are hindgut fermenters like horses, koalas, possums, wombats, and pigs. They use microbes that are washed out because they cannot be digested and high-quality protein is lost. So they eat their feces in this way they can extract the necessary nutrition from their food this process is called coprophagy.

Hamster’s Hygiene

A Hamster’s cage should be clean every night. Hamster usually picks a certain place to do the excretion of urine and feces. Whereas that urine-soaked bed should be cleaned both for hamster's health and smell. The Cage must be clean completely about once a week removing all bedding and replacing it with a fresh one. To reduce the urine smell the use of waffles may be a good remedy. The chlorophyll in waffles helps reduce the urine smell; the Cage then smells cleaner for much longer and so does the resident.

When Hamsters are born they are hairless. But they grow quite a lot of hair and their hair gets a lot greasier and starts to smell as well but don’t ever think of bathing Hamster.

Hamster can get ill as they cannot bear extreme temperatures, so the options that you are left with are to clean the Hamster with a toothbrush or let the Hamster roll in the chinchilla sand, or if the Hamster is very dirty then dip a cotton bud in lukewarm water and squeeze it out then dab the Hamster with it.

Hamster’s teeth do not stop growing throughout their lives; you don’t have to worry about their teeth as their diet and habits keep their teeth clean without any need for brushing. Hamsters need the gnawing surface to keep the incisors to the right length for that purpose wooden blocks and huts made of natural material should be provided in the Cage for Hamster. Our Hands should be wash before taking Hamster into our hands as it affects the health of both.

Family of Hamsters

There is a good array of Hamsters to settle on from that are kept as a pet, the one that's most adopted as the pet is that the Syrian or Golden Hamster; this species of Hamster is called by many names for commercial reasons as Fancy Hamster, Honey Bear, Panda Bear, Black Bear, European Black Bear, Polar Bear, Teddy Bear, and Dalmatian depending on their coloration.

People also like Dwarf Hamsters; it has four different species that are popular and kept as pets, Russian Dwarf is the common of all those four species, there is a very interesting fact about the Winter White Russian Dwarf Hamster the coat turns almost white during winter when the hours of daylight decrease.

Another species in the Dwarf Hamster category is Roborovski Hamster; which is recommended for those who need a pet that is fun to watch and required less personal handling, they are very small and active. They are very hard to catch and are very social as opposed to some other species of Hamster.

Chinese Hamster Is another species of Hamster though it is not related to the social dwarf category they are very calm, handled, and gentle as compared to others and one of its endearing traits is that it clings to a finger with all four paws used at laboratories for research. It is the only Hamster that has a prehensile tail.

CLICK HERE > Most Popular Hamster Breeds: Which is Perfect for Me?

Hamster Send or Get Diseases from Human

The immune system of hamsters is very fragile and they can get affected by foreign elements. The humans do send and receive such viruses that cause many diseases, you ought to be very careful as most of them were reported upon getting bitten by a Hamster or the hamsters transmitted them once they were carried by a sick owner; though they shouldn’t immediately throw outside should be addressed.

The common diseases which can be transmitted to humans from Hamster are list below:

1.Salmonellosis :

These infections are usually employee by Salmonella enteritidis bio Typhimurium. If salmonellosis occurs during a child who features a rodent pet, the pet’s feces should be cultured for Salmonella. Negative cultures may occur because shedding could also be only intermittent.

2.Lymphocytic choriomeningitis:

LCM virus finds in many rodent species and spreads to humans through contact with infected aerosols, direct animal contact, or rodent bites.

The LCM virus (an RNA virus of the Arenaviridae family) is transmitted among rodents through secretions (urine, saliva, feces)In hamsters LCM viral infections are often detected only by laboratory tests. In humans the course of infection varies from inapparent to a flu-like infection with fever, headache, and severe myalgia, occurring 5 to 10 days after infection.

Humans should avoid contact with hamsters upon having a cough, cold, or suffering from flu, as that can be transmitted and vice versa. Hands should be wash before and after handling hamsters for the health of both hamsters and humans. Try to avoid the hamster bite as this will be the first source of receiving diseases from Hamster.

Conclusion

For all the hamster lovers here we have provided information about hamster diet hygiene family & diseases. Hopefully, This information will be helpful for you.