No. Just a lil when I got them and slowly increase until today (in cae they get diarrhea). I didn't have the opportunity of buying them when they just got weaned. But I still love em to bits. Hahaha

BTW if the leg just shrivelled and fell off, then it most probably is a genetic disease. More like a genetic defect. I've seen inbred robos born with 4 legs but ended up having 2 back legs lame after a certain age (no accidents involved. And luckily not mine. )

I think your WW is not used to your scent. You don't handle her as often as your parents? My hamsters are tamest when I handle them because I handle them to most. It applies for both syrians and robos so I think i applies to all hamsters.

When you catch her, scoop her up with 2 hands. Or train her to jump into your hand. If a fully tamed hamster has 10 points, chasing them all over the tank with your hand trying to catch them reduces trust point down by 2 or 3. I'm lazy to scoop them one by one (my robos back then) so I train them to jump on my hand in a whole group. The I just lift and deposit them in a spare tank while I clean their tank.

And yes, I think you're very kind to adopt a hamster with special needs and only has 3 legs. I said pink skin because hamsters (normal ones) have fur dense enough to cover their skin. Inbred robos have pink skin (in the sense that I can see the skin beneath the fur just by looking. In other words, fur too little).

Don't give up and do it every single day. Feed her with your palm open and lotsa food in the centre. You can make her take all the fresh from your hand so if she sees your hand, she knows (or expect) there will be goodies there all the time.

I put the smoothie sauce dish on my hand sometimes (I use this tactic to partly train my syrians. Works well. Just keep putting a little higher up your arm when they grow used to your hand and they will treat your whole arm like "road to good food". ) But now they just climb up daily without any food. Then they get a nice brushing.

Vergas, your syrian's markings are beautiful. Hehe...

I just came back from PLC at Sunway Pyramid. I saw 3 guys browsing cages there and I managed to summon the courage to walk up to them, asking them if they're buying hamsters.

One of the guys said he already had 1, so I asked if he was buying cages, and he said he was browsing for one.

So I told him metal bar cages were really bad for hamsters and advised him to get a plastic 1.5 ft tank for his hamster (just 1 WW). I also asked him to buy bedding that was not made frpm pine for his hamster's health.

After browsing and my advice, he thanked me for the info then we parted ways lo.

My Roche chews wooden chew sticks and doggie chew toys. My Ferro doesn't chew either. Depends on individual hamsters lo.

Guys, since the situation kinda brought me in that direction I weighed Roche and Ferro today on my mum's kitchen scale. They both weighed at about 30 gm only when I first got them.

Today, Ferro is 50 gm (such a small eater, my naughty boy). My dear Roche weighs somewhere in between 80 to 90 gm!

SMOOTHIE IS SO GOOD!

Hahhaa... I fork out money from my pocket to make them healthy and chubby. So they can help by giving me results ma. BTW I'm still having probs with Ferro's fur matt. I missed out 1 area of his fur last night and today got new matt. Sigh...

Cut already lo. Always at the corner corner of his long fur.

Short hairs like Roche of course no prob. Long hairs like Ferro lo... Sigh...

My camera no battery. Hehe... But will post soon.

Everyday comb ferro's hair lo. 1 day no comb sure got matt. Or accidentally didn't comb one spot like yesterday also kena. Sigh...

Well, since you mentioned that your hamster is syrian, then how can you "find" your male mating with your female? You house them together? I hope you know that syrians are solitary and should never be housed together. I've seen several syrians ganging up on another syrian and tear it up then eat it... If you don't want that to happen to your syrian please seperate them.

Housing them together also means that they will mate continuously and produce babies. You can house so many? Brothers and sisters mating will cause inbreeding, and produce inbred pups that are ugly, fur not so nice, very very unhealthy so it will fall sick easily and have very short lifespans. They may also have genetic defects.

I am not flaming you yar. I just feel that this is a really important point and hope you will think it over nicely.

About your female, I am guessing that she had her first heat only. It is advisable to always breed your female on the second heat, and definitely not the first. Your female is probably not ready to be a mama. So she didn't mate with your male willingly. She probably got "raped".

So since she was not very willing and the male may have been aggressive at being turned away, she got traumatized by that experience. She isn't holed up cuz she is pregant. Mama hamsters still run and explore and exercise before and after the babies are born. Your female is hiding because she is scared.

So she is afraid of everything now. The only way is to slowly gain back her trust.

Pregnant hamsters do sometimes become a lil more aggressive but not to the point of being very timid.

My hand tamed female robos always let me handle them before and after givin birth (when babies are 2-3 weeks old). They get a lil aggressive and nip if they see sudden movements sometimes but immediately recognise my scent and everything is alright.

I hope you will do what is best for your hamster. And since she is pregnant, please feed her more nutritious food.

If nezu added brownie as a competitor all of us need to pack bag go back and leave all the prizes for her.

Wah~ Jealous! Your babies are almost as big as my heavy weight champion, Roche.

LOL, Ryo, need to panic?

BTW nice to see button again. So cute! Just like the last time I saw her. Really have to go to your place soon.

I saw Ferro training for the Olympics just now... He was hanging on with hs 2 front paws for 1 minutes in his cage. 1 minute!!

Actually the food looks worse than habitrail. It has so much more corn than habitrail.

I comb Ferro's fur daily or it will matt up with shavings. Already twice I have to cut off the small matting.

O! My robos used to do that when they're in panic!!

Sometimes I will hold the scruff at the back of the hammie's neck to check if their under fur is stained or is thinning (like health check lar) and some of the robos who are less familiar with me and have a full cheek of food will start spewing out their food.

I think their cheek feels painful being poked by all the seeds so they remove it (just guessing). Kinda look like they're surrendering their food for their release though. Kinda funny sometimes if you look at it one way.

There's only really 2 ways to solve the fur matting prolem (in my opinion).

1st way is to cut it sjort. But that defeats the purpose of having a long haired syrian, so please don't do it.

2nd way and the best and last method, is to comb daily and thoroughly. I use the word thoroughly because missing a spot can make a matt tomorrow. That's why there was a second time for Ferro's fur matting. Missed a bit. We must clean out the shavings from their fur, all, and make sure it's not tangled. So far ok la. No matting after the second time.

jayniel, we can now conclude that hammies use bribe as a formal way to tell humans that they want to be released and should immediately be released upon recieving bribe.

Aiyar, food is the most important thing for them ma (maybe smoothie is most important to them? )

I dunno about Pet Safari. Scared of anything they sell which is a live.

Pet Family has la. An aquarium shop near to it has also.

Don't use shavings for bedding, like jayniel suggested. Use corn cob?

Hamsters need to get used to brushing. I don't think they have social grooming in wild hammies so it's not even in their instinct to enjoy brushing.

But Roche just loves her brushing. Stays still for a couple of minutes when I brush her. Ferro will wander around but around my hand lar, so I guess he accepts brushing.

Tonight I will post picture of Ferro and his skirt. This fella is not trainable to do tricks. No talent.

Sometimes I can't understand the difficulty in feeding eggs to hamsters. Both my robos and syrians love boiled eggs.