# Hamsters... Borrowed time



## Berrywoods (Mar 25, 2010)

Hi guys, when we was due to open and started sourcing animals to start breeding and to have from the off, a friend of mine gave me a big speech on how i should sell syrians, now ill be honest, not a fan of syrians, i see them as an adults pet, not the child friendly first pet they are made out to be, in the end i took some from a friend of mine who had a litter, and i paired 2 up back at christmas time who had a wonderful litter of creams, in total i had 19, the plan was to take some to continue breeding (mix the 2 families to start as unrelated) closer to openeing i changed my mind on breeding them and decided to let what we had go, and not continue having them, (im a softy for winter whites more so)

Now when parents come in wanting a hamster for their 5 year old son, i wont lie when they ask "will it bite me" i tell them the chances are your son will be in bed when its awake, and if you wake it during the day you will get bitten. Most of these people left with winter whites... Now 4 weeks later i have now 16 hammies who until now have not started to bicker.. but today i had to seperate one who was starting trouble.

Now im a little worried, obviously very soon these guys will start fighting, i dont want to have to resort to some silly "pets at home" special offer as i dont believe animals should be part of a "special offer" but id rather these guys find homes now, rather than have a bit of a tiff while im not there. 

It'll probably end in me buying a bulk load of cages for them all, and spending longer finding them homes. (or at worst, ill be the new owner of 16 syrians...) 

Has the popularity of syrians dropped recently? Ive found atleast 75% of people come in looking for dwarf hamster varients, maybe 15% of those either have no idea what types of hamster there are or are undecided and 10% of those are dead set on syrians.

Really not sure on a good way to go forward with these guys, they are sweet, we had some lovley colours, a tortose shell half rex, 2 or 3 blacks, a lovley really light cream half rex whos colour i cant put a name to. 

We did have a full rex but as you can imagine, he was one of the first to go.


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## SEVEN_PETS (Aug 11, 2009)

Syrians need to be separate from a young age, because they will fight to the death. I used to work in a pet shop, and I saw a couple of times a hamster killing another and eating it. :scared:


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## Berrywoods (Mar 25, 2010)

SEVEN_PETS said:


> Syrians need to be separate from a young age, because they will fight to the death. I used to work in a pet shop, and I saw a couple of times a hamster killing another and eating it. :scared:


yup, they are probably 1 week away from the age id normally seperate same sexed pairs, im gonna to on the safe side order some cages this week, so atleast should they bicker anymore, i can seperate them, i feel a little happier now that a friend of mine (crazy friend) who is syrian obsesed has said if i supply cages he will take all 16, he already has 4, and loves them, (hes a little special if you get what i mean, but he has a way with them, he tells me hes never been bitten by one)

this whole situation is a bit of a failure on my part, i didnt want to ever have too many animals, in most cases i wanted to not have enough hoping that due to the way we do things people would reserve our animals sometimes before they are even born, only the rats this seems to have happend with, we have around 4 babies already reserved and the litter isnt due for another 2 weeks  Black eyed siamese i cant wait


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## Baby British (Jan 24, 2010)

I just want to say that despite this incident with the Syrians I really admire what you're doing and would love to do something similar if only I had the finances.

It grieves me how the majority of pet shops source their stock from rodent farms, byb's etc and then don't spend any time handling them thus the animals are sold not being used to and in many cases fearing human contact.

I want to breed my Mongolian gerbils once the female is old enough. Me and the OH took a 3 hour round trip to collect them from different breeders as I didn't want to breed from pet shop stock. The gerbils still hadn't been handled as much as I'd have liked and are still rather skittish. I'll see what the pups turn out like (these will be well handled) and pair off mum and dad with a same sex off spring and keep the babies in same sex pairs if it all goes pair shaped.

My Duprasi came from a pet shop (they are still quite rare and this would be my only chance of owning one). I've only had her a few days and she has bitten. I only ever bought her as a pet and she'll never be bred. I suspected she would bite though as she is around 8 months old now whereas ideally they should handled regularly from a few weeks old, obviously this doesn't tend to happen in pet shops 

If I lived near to your shop I would definitely have my name down on waiting lists for some of your animals as it's nice that you seem to actually care about your animals and customers alike :thumbup:


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## Berrywoods (Mar 25, 2010)

Baby British said:


> I just want to say that despite this incident with the Syrians I really admire what you're doing and would love to do something similar if only I had the finances.
> 
> It grieves me how the majority of pet shops source their stock from rodent farms, byb's etc and then don't spend any time handling them thus the animals are sold not being used to and in many cases fearing human contact.
> 
> ...


Thanks so much, you really dont know much it means to me when people say things like you have, when we first opened i posted on the reptile forum (where i used to lerk as a fancy rat breeder) We recieved almost 3 pages of pure abuse, with the odd person telling the others they were over-reacting, a friend of mine who is helping me out as i cant afford to pay for any staff yet, she runs a rattery in lowestoft, she got a total hammering from a lot of the other fancy rat breeders too. many have added both mine and her names to their "dont sell our rats to these people" lists, very over the top i thought, but it still really knocked my confidence in this whole thing, a lot of the fancy rat breeders seemed to lost sight in why to breed in the first place, which i think is to give the best people who deserve them, access to better animals, it started with me when i would hear stories of people buying rats from petshops, being bitten by them, and from then on thinking rats are horrible pets,

 thank you so much and thats from both me and my other half, it really really does mean a lot


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## catz4m8z (Aug 27, 2008)

Im on the look out for a dwarf Hammie at the mo. Not coz I have a true preference but coz Ive never had the experience of owning one. (TBH I'll probably end up with another syrian at some point as well!).
I hunted all over but have found pet shops to be the only place that actually sells them, no breeders anywhere near me. And we have equal popularity I would say.


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