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Post by megs on Apr 18, 2006 20:00:40 GMT -4
Uh-oh. I'm getting the Dwarf itch again. lol. I was in the pet store yesterday. They had a pair of young Agouti Campbells dwarfs, so adorable. I love the way they scurry around the tank. So I look to the left... and there's a single dwarf in there, snuggled into the bedding. She's a little larger. After watching her for a minute.. I see bedding move.... and think it's another tank-mate, burried in the bedding... then I see a tiny pink thing wiggle upwards!!! Babies!! Oh my! I fell in love. I left the pet store with my purchase of the eggplant toy and some Carefresh, but I couldn't stop thinking about the little babies. They were likely born the night before last. I am thinking about going back and checking on them weekly... and am thinking about bringing a pair home in a few weeks... MAYBE. This is only a consideration, and being that they are so new yet, I have a few weeks to think about it. But I like knowing exactly when they were born and that I will be able to have them from a young age. This will be a big decision for me. Comments?
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Post by Die Fledermaus on Apr 18, 2006 20:21:34 GMT -4
Bring all the babies home, and the mom, and an aunt if one is around.
That is what I do. I then separate them by gender, and have extremely friendly tame groups that are great fun to watch scurry about in their goofy way.
I always grab pregnant (if we can tell) dwarfs or moms and new litters.
I currently have five females together, one is the mom; an aunt died a few months ago. I have four males in a Habitrail: two are brothers, one a cousin*, and one the last survivor of my previous group. He was so tame he could be successfully introduced to the others even though no relation. Trixie was his mom, and Sandy his sister (see memorial photos).
*The cousin has a few sisters. The mom and babies I took, and a few weeks later the aunt had a surprise litter. Two litters. I had to separate at once to avoid the older group eating the babies, and then reintro them. It took a little care, but it worked out.
You could never imagine so many friendly dwarfs. Wish I had a group of a dozen!
At least get the pair, if not the mom and babies.
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Post by megs on Apr 18, 2006 20:28:50 GMT -4
Okay, I'm getting excited now. I will keep checking back on them regularly. I think they're too young to travel right now, I'm not even sure how many babies there were. I have plans to get a new bin-type cage, and I already have a 20-gal tank with a mesh lid in the event that I were to bring them all home and separate into a male and female group. Oh geez. It might be getting a little crowded around here!
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Post by Die Fledermaus on Apr 18, 2006 20:43:11 GMT -4
I brought the babies home (separately from the mom) when they were several days old. They stayed in a lot of the bedding they were on as did ther mom. The babies were scooped up with something, not touched.
A previous time, in a store that knew me well. I reserved the babies for weeks until old enough to be sexed (by them). But I can sex them myself now in due course so it doesn't matter to me now.
I will try to take photos of the bunch.
Last night I switched Cayden (Panda Bear male Syrian) from the CT2 to the big Habitrail with tubes and addons. I put the dwarfs in the CT2. hey all had a good time sniffing around. And the dwarfs easily could negotiate that big vertical tube.
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Post by megs on Apr 19, 2006 0:57:30 GMT -4
Yes, I'd love to see pictures of the crew. Glad they are adapting to their new CT2 home. I'm going to go back to the pet shop in a few days and see if I can count how many babies there are.
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Post by Die Fledermaus on Apr 19, 2006 5:04:25 GMT -4
Oh. I forgot to mention. They were switiched only for an hour as play time; they all wanted out after awhile, including Cayden in the Habitrail. Tonight I found my little paraplegic agouti mouse dead. Don't know why. I always called her Sweetie. very calm and nice. She lived several months with her back legs paralyzed. I could tell as soon as I took the top off the Tupperware thing she was gone as there was no bedding in the water. Too bad.
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Post by megs on Apr 19, 2006 5:12:31 GMT -4
Awww... that's a shame Was she born like that?
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Post by Die Fledermaus on Apr 19, 2006 5:38:35 GMT -4
No, it was an accident. She got around fine on two legs crawling theough the bedding. I could see the path. And she could never jump away like the loonies in the bathroom!
I got yesterday a big deep purple water jug with a handle and top. It is not too wide. My hope is I can get the mice to run in there when I pull their house off as I begin cleaning their place. We shall see. . .
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Post by megs on Apr 19, 2006 7:11:44 GMT -4
No, it was an accient. She got around fine on two legs crawling theough the bedding. I could see the path. And she could never jump away like the loonies in the bathroom! I got yesterday a big deep purple water jug with a handle and top. It is not too wide. My hope is I can get the mice to run in there when I pull their house off as I begin cleaning their place. We shall see. . . Good luck with that! Keep us posted.
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Post by Hamsters82 on Apr 20, 2006 10:33:04 GMT -4
That would be so cool, Meghan, if you got a pair of dwarfs! And you can handle them to make sure they're not all bitey later. I say go for it if you have the time and the space for them.
Question: Can you clean a cage that has baby hamsters in it with the mom still feeding/etc? The reason I ask this is b/c from another forum I see a lot of people saying no, when I did this with Harriet and her seven.
I'm sorry if I don't see your answer in due time as I'm on our college comp, but thank you for your answers.
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Post by Die Fledermaus on Apr 20, 2006 20:41:18 GMT -4
You shouldn't. And you shouldn't need to, unless mites.
But if you do not touch the babies and scoop them up with lots bedding I would not worry about it. If here are mites in the bedding you have a problem; none of my mite remedies I have tried with babies present.
As I've said, I took a whole litter of six dwarf babies home, with mom and aunt (who had her own litter two weeks later). Five babies grew to be big little dwarfs. Sixth "vanised". Not a bad ratio.
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Post by megs on Apr 21, 2006 4:13:15 GMT -4
Checked on the little Dwarf babies again today, on the way home from my Proteins final exam. The Mum was right up close where I could see, so I watched them for a few minutes, hoping to see how big the babies were and see how many there were! At one point she stood up a tiny bit and there had to have been at least 5! Maybe 6 or 7! So I am confident I can get two of the same sex. They're still quite pink, although a couple looked darker than others so there may even be good colour variety. The mother is quite black, but not solid black. I'm looking forward to seeing the colours! I'll keep you updated as I continue to check back
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Post by Die Fledermaus on Apr 21, 2006 13:30:39 GMT -4
I will tell you again that getting all of them and the mom, requires minimal extra space. Sexing is easy with a little experience. You might end up with five females and three males. The more in a group the more fun they are, and the less likely you will be left with only one if the other suddenly dies. If that happens you will wish you got the bunch. I have to take a photo of all five remaining girls hopping on their back legs in a bin. . . later.
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Post by megs on Apr 21, 2006 14:39:19 GMT -4
I will think about getting them all, or at least all of the one sex. We will see. I"m not sure if I want to have two more habitats. Space in here is tight (I live in one room), but I do have room for at least one. And "technically" it's against my lease agreement to have pets in here... but I think they are alot more concerned about cats and dogs, then a hamster in a cage. The manager has never figured it out and I've been keeping hamsters for almost 4 years. It's always fun hiding everyone when she comes in to change the smoke alarm battery!
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Post by pinky on Apr 21, 2006 15:44:04 GMT -4
Hey Megs--you know I'm all for owning small hamsters! How exciting to possibly get them so young!
How did that Proteins final go? You had a course just on proteins? Pretty specialized! Hopefully you learned a lot more than just how to draw histidine!
Jenna's and NP's cages (from your another forum post) look like they'd be a challenge to hide! Do you have big closets??
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