Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey evryone...I am convinced that breeding gerbils for the purpose of feeding snakes is a bit of a nuisance. I am also covince that breeding mice is not too friendly to the nose. So I have decided to go with the dwarf hamsters. I am looking into getting 1.3 colony. I was thinking about keeping them in a ten gallon tank and having a five gallon tank for the male. I have heard that males tend to eat the young. However,I was wondering if I should separate the females once they are pregnant so they may have privacy with their litter and avoid any canabalism from the other females in the colony....Thanks....-ELvy

I've been breeding them for a while now and my males never eat the babies. Maybe that's just my hamsters, they are all tame and mellow! The only time a baby is eaten is if it dies, then the mother eats it. The males help the female keep the baby warm and provide nesting material. If the male is not careful around the young the female will chase him away from them for a while. The females are actually the vicious ones! When you get them make sure the females get along, usually they will fight constantly unless they are raised together since birth. If you can't find a couple of females that get along start with two pairs instead. Good Luck.

I had a female dwarf hamster once. She killed and ate every male pup she had...all the females survived but she killed the males..and the only time she'd let the male near her was for breeding. Personally, hamsters are a pain. I got a golden hamster once that was already pregnant..the pups were born and 3 or 4 weeks old and she ate all but 2..after 4 weeks of caring for them. I think she was a bit psychotic though. Hated to be handled at all..she was bought as snake food...but...being pregnant I let her have her pups first...

I have a colony that began as a 1.2 but is quickly growing. I haven't had any problems with cannibalism. I keep them all in a 10 gallon aquarium. The upside to them over mice is that the smell is almost non-existant. Their cage barely smells at all after a week. The downsize is that they have pretty small litters. Mine have had litters between 3 and 5 pups. The only reason that I started breeding them was for a really picky snake that I have. Now my colony has about 8-10 hamsters in it, and I honestly can't tell you how many males and females, but they still get along.
Paul

I wouldnt think you'd need any help breeding these rascals!
My brother and I had two as pets a few years back (yeah so i can't quite bring myself to feed them to anything) and lucky us cuz they were male and female. Tame as could be, until she was pregnant, and it all went to hell. They can have babies like... every 18 days! Seriously, we had a litter every freaking 18 days for months before I could get rid of all of them. We went from 2 to 37 in two months (i think, might be less) time. The first litter, I think the mom got stressed out since it was her first, and they both ended up eating most of them. It was pretty gross. After that they did fine.
Moral of the story, unless you want a thousand hamsters, lol... never get more than 1!
Anyways, we always kept all ours together in one 10 gal cage... but took the babes out when they were able to take care of themselves so that the dad would leave them alone.
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~~Tania~~
(and Jake, Peter, and Mary) the lizard family.