Ok I think we have everything, large cage, wheel, bed, food bowl, water bottle, mineral & salt wheels, toys, wood shavings, food & treats. But before we bring one home this Friday (been advised to get a male, less grumpy) I'd appreciate any tips or advice.

They don't live long. Ours once escaped & went behind the gas fire & burnt one side of his whiskers off on the pilot light.
THEN..got into bed with me & the missus. Really.

Best place to keep it is the end of your bed.

They don't react well to being fed chocolate. If it appears dead in winter, get a vet to confirm it's not hibernating.

they're great !

they teach the kids about mortality (sooner or later), do fab stunts climbing the bars of the cage (after the kids are in bed) and don't take all that much looking after

handle it a lot – they become incredibly kid-friendly that way (may bite you a bit at 1st, so don't let the kids do it initially

(err, you do have kids … ?) 😳

oh, and I don't think that Richard Gere stuff was true

What esselgruntfuttock said – they don't live long. I shall never forget the catastrophic drama when 'Eve' died, truly my world fell apart. That, and Bambi's mother dying, left me emotionally scarred for the rest of my life. I blame my parents.

It will pee in the same place so put a large jar on it's side where it pees and it will pee in the jar making cleaning much easier.

Nice wee beasties, but I prefer rats though, just better in my opinion, PJ

You could get him a ball to run about in outside of the cage, they like that. Good for when you're cleaning the cage out.

It's also nice to have a little 'run' thing that you can make a large but enclosed space for him to roam freely in on the living room floor 🙂

If it appears dead in winter, get a vet to confirm it's not hibernating.

Or save yourself £30 and warm it up with a hair dryer gently.

Don't get more than one they fight like hell.

Mine, Henry, is awesome!

They only tend to bite if your hands smell tasty, so if you've been handling food either wash them or handle some
Of the hamsters bedding first.

Mines nearly 2 and only bit me once, not out of spite or defence, just because I smelt tasty!!

Get one that's been well handled from being born, hopefully it won't nip as much.
They are such fun. Ours used to climb up to the top of the curtains and then fall off. Amazingly it lived for 2 and a bit years. Answered to the name of 'dizzy'.

One tip though – they are nocturnal, so if you have a squeaky wheel, it will drive you nuts if someone is sleeping nearby.

Reminds me of our pet hamster who went by the name Quincy M.E. Little chap lasted over 4 years. I'm sure I read that the stress of being handled reduced hamsters life spans…kind of makes sense really.

Or save yourself £30 and warm it up with a hair dryer gently.

I don't know if that was meant to be funny, but it made me laugh.

Cheers all, it's for my daughters fifth Birthday, (we've not heard about anything else for weeks, lol) so hoping it also provides a little positive life lesson.

Eagerly awaiting your next post
"My hamster's escaped – where is it likely to hide?"

Great wee chappies. Ours last 4.5 years. Burnt out two wheels, had to run it on a brass bush and prep-m …

… it will eat *all* your kitchen scraps.

The plastic sphere exercise balls will just sprinkle shite and piss all over your house though …

One tip though – they are nocturnal, so if you have a squeaky wheel, it will drive you nuts if someone is sleeping nearby.

LOL – so true!

I used to have to chock the wheel on my girlfriend's hamster cage so stop it making the annoying noise all night

The little dude was hilarious in the wheel though. He would move loads of his food into the wheel, then get in and run round, the food would rain down on him 😆

I kept saying I would modify the wheel so it was supported on proper silent running ballraces but the hamster died before I got round to it 🙄

Gerbils much more exciting for the kids
get 2 girls like wot my daughter did from the pet shop 227 babies later they both died the randy little buggers .

good thing was the pet shot traded the young uns for bags of food ,I suspect it had fertility drugs in it

+1 for rats, much more fun and entertaining. One of our old females – Anabelle used to curl up on my lap and go to sleep. Edit: I admit that's not very entertaining.

You can train them to come to their names and if ther're bored they will come to you to play, ours used to nick my daughters pencils whils she was doing her homework. And there's nothing funnier than watching a rat trying to run across the floor with a slice of toast in its mouth.

Enjoy the hamster though, and make sure you handle it regularly.

Remember that hamsters are very short sighted, so don't have multi-tier cages where they can fall any great height. For the same reason, be careful about putting them on tables. Remember to check the cage for security, as hammies are masters of escape.

And Syrian hamsters are almost generally pathologically antisocial, especially to their own kind – in the wild they only come together to mate (even that can result in a fight if Mrs Hamster isn't up for it), then swiftly go their seperate ways. When they have kids, they get booted out and ordered to find their own territory fairly swiftly. In my experience, they generally ignore their wheels until the hours of 1 – 3 in the morning.

Dwarf hamsters (Russian and Chinese) are more sociable and happier living in groups, but remember they will need special cages with narrower bars.

We also used to let ours loose in the early evenings. After it died we had a new carpet fitted in the lounge and to my horror, under the telly cabinet was a pyramid of droppings.
He'd also nibbled through a wire that connected another telephone line in the house.

The rodent related anecdotes are making me smile lots. Keep 'em coming. 🙂

Another plus for rats. Mine I could leave to run around, including in the garden, without the fear of escape. My hamster was like bleeding houndini. I never had problems with my mice either, if ever they found a way out of the their cages (door left open etc) they always found their own way back – I think they were too daft/nervous to go very far from "home".

Talking of escape, I recall the time ours managed to climb into my parent's brand spanking new leather sofa. Cue me taking a stanley knife to the underside of the sofa, and dismantling it in order to retrieve said hamster before dad got home.

They've still got the same sofa 12 years later, so Dad has yet to find the gaffa taped up underside …

My hamster (Raziel, RIP, lived to just under 3) was a little git. I knew it from the moment I saw him – he was the last in the shop, this little bundle of ginger fluff. Shop assistant opened the cage, and he just started squeaking angrily (the hamster, not the assistant).

It was odd, because he was mooching around like your average hamster, seemed like your average hamster… apart from the noise. That was why he was the last in the shop – apparently he was unusually noisy. I decided that this slightly bonkers rodent and myself were destined to be together!

Truth be told, I never handled him much – I'd stroke him whilst he was in his cage, normally after bribing him with treats. I was happy just to watch him mooching, and was bedazzled at how massive he could make his face. Seriously, it's amazing.

Only ever had one escaping incident – I'd popped him in his ball while I was changing his cage, and after a minute looked around – the ball was empty, lid off. There then ensured a good hour or so of lifting up sofas. I'd lift up the one, Raziel would run under the other. I'd lift up the other, he'd run back to the first sofa. FOR OVER AN HOUR.

My sister & I both had hamsters as kids. They used to climb up the stone fireplace, run along the top & throw themselves into the wastepaper bin underneath – then climb out & do it all over again!

She lost hers for a couple of days once, then moved one of her easter eggs only to find the back had been munched off & there was a very fat & sleepy hamster in the bottom of the chocolate egg! 😆

Only memory of my sisters hamster was it escaping and chewing a mahoosive hole in my parents 2 day old lounge carpet – right in the middle. I thought i was going to wet myself laughing. I was given the task of looking after it when she went away and i managed to kill it in a week, I think it had just had enough.

We've just got a dwarf Russian hamster, 'Roary' for my daughter. He is a very agreeable chap. Seems to like being handled and it is very comical to watch him mooching. Just trying to persuade Mrs.C that gerbils are where it is at for the 2011 season.

I've had many many rodents, I'm sure the hamster was the most smelly out of them all. Rats and gerbils were my favourites 😛

But tips for hamsters, handle it as much as possible at the start to get it really used to you, and don't pick it up from above (it'll think you're a predator!), put your hand in front and let it climb on. And make sure you give it things to do (e.g. things to chew, a ball to run around in etc.) this will keep it happy 🙂

Just enjoy it 😀

My hamster 'Sonic' was a nutcase. He'd hang from the top of his cage like a kid on monkeybars then he'd swing up and run on the top of the wheel instead of inside it. He was really tame as well, he'd fall asleep in your hands if you held him.

Had him 3 years before he croaked after an unfortunate garden incident. 🙁

My hamster 'Rambo' lived for about 4 years and went through about a dozen wheels in that time, he would eat the plastic ones and the metal ones were far too noisy.

My after school & weekend job as a teenager in the 70's was at a pet wholesalers. Alongside interesting exotic stuff like parrots, monkeys, reptiles we sold a lot of the usual pets, tortoises, budgies, goldfish & thousands of hamsters. Wholesale quantities of them. 500 to a large glass fibre tank. They soon lose their appeal when you have to muck those sort of numbers out.

They can scrape/chew through a smooth glass fibre tank. When that happens you have 500 of the things running around. We had permanent colonies living in the walls of the building & outside in the summer, feeding off the uneaten birdseed in the sawdust/shavings/birdsh1t that got tipped out the back.

Don't feed them to snakes. We lost a number of pythons after doing that when the boss was too tight to buy in baby rats.

+1 to the comments about rats.

Don't feed them to snakes. We lost a number of pythons after doing that

Oh, yeah, just bloody leave us hanging like that why don't you ?!

(do hamsters eat snakes? 😳 )

nope they dont live too long.. (they get 'Wet tail' if they are ill…then they die…..we used to look after the skool hamsters wen i was younger….you could guarantee the little feckers wud die in the skool hols…i remember a bad thunderstorm one summer (the hamsters were acually screaming in their cages ! till i threw a sheet over them…shut up then ! Back in the days … one escaped , and went under the floor boards…. he popped out 5 days later alive ! its a wonder he hadnt been eaten by the the gremlins that lived under the floorboards ! lol

Yep we discovered the hibernating thing – Long after they were buried.

The compost heap of cherry blossom piled on top of the grave by a 6 year old and a 4 year old was a sight to see. It was an outpouring of grief that rivalled that of Diana's funeral apparently. (Not) We just liked climbing the cherry tree and cutting off branches.

Don't feed them to snakes. We lost a number of pythons after doing that

Oh, yeah, just bloody leave us hanging like that why don't you ?!

(do hamsters eat snakes? )

We never worked out what killed them. Someone suggested it was the fur. Normally we used mice or rats for live food & never had any problems.

I did see a mouse having a chew on one once where we put too many mice in the tank & not removed the survivors after the snakes had fed.

Arggg…the noise we're on our second now and all i can say is make sure it's kept in your daughters room or else you'll never sleep at night (squeek, squeek, squeek goes the wheel).
Our first one got out when the dog pulled the cage over, it ran off and got under the hall way floorboards. The wife phoned me up asking where the circular saw was and when i asked why she said that she had been trying to coax it out to no avail so she was going to cut up the floor to get it. Luckily I got home to prevent the carnage to the house for the sake of a flipping Hamster. Oh and they bite too….like you wouldn't believe.

Nasty bite, short lifespan, boring, nocturnal. Probably active after the kids have gone to bed. MTFU and either

stop the kids bullying you into getting them a pet

or

get a proper pet