May I ask all the hamster rearer here, is first time hamster mother really careless one and death of pups rate is high?

The story is like this, my friend go vacation so she give me a cage of hamster mother with 4 new born pups, everything seem fine at beginning except she look very tiring, and I never kacau them, i just continue gave foods and water, I try to gave her hard boiled egg but it really doesn't like to eat it

ok, after a few days I start to notice got ants crawling to the hamster cage, I chase them all away ... from outside the cage of course, I didn't kacau the mother, then I notice there's 1 pup is die, seem like not biting by it's mother ... more like just die in a natural way.

so the day after that, everyday there's one pup die, this time only i notice they die because not enough heat, coz their mom is very careless and forgot to sleep close to them ... she will sleep quite some distance with her child. after her children all die and only left 1, she seem very happy and relax and run around, even invite me to play with her ... and I notice the last pup is going to die because I think the mom not feeding it and not provide body heat to it.

until today I saw the mom sitting together with the last pup, that pup doesn't even move ... I suspect it die already, the mother still happily wander around and eat sleep like normal without notice why all her children dead and she didn't feed them ...

since I never rear hamster b4, this time I just temporary help my friend to take care of it, so I don't know is it normally hamster mother is like that? =_= she's very friendly to me but extremely firece to other adult hamsters which is in other cage. (coz sometime I bring other hamster near her cage to visit her ma .... haha) man ... she's fierce like want to kill other lovely hamsters, but I just bring them near the cage, so nothing is harmed


EDIT: typo

This post has been edited by ReWeR: Oct 26 2007, 05:21 PM

Thx for the reply, at first I also think she rejecting it ... but after my observtion, it's more like she try her best to take care of them, but she doesn't do it properly. For example she'll go out from the nest and play for like 1 hour then only go back ... by that time the baby might already die due to not enough body heat, I've heard some hamster need to have both father n mother take care the pups together ... I dunno is she belong to this breed or not. Until now she's still try her best to take care of the last dead pup, just that still come out to play a bit then only go back nest lar.

Talking about stress, she doesn't seem very stress, still very playful and happy when saw me, but I guess you might be right, the new environment might attract her to play instead of focus on take care her youngs. The female hamster I think definitely older than 4 months, but she did look like not enough milk already after few days feeding. I bring other hamster coz she seem lonely inside, so I bring her husband near her, mana tau her friendliness only apply for human only .

oh ... perfume? perfume that use by girl is it? never tot got this way one.

may I ask winter white able to endure 18-20 degree celcius temperature? I plan to bring them to office but I scare they can't endure the air-cond.