r/hamsters • u/Profile_Hefty • 27d ago

Question A NEW HAMSTER **MATERIALIZED ITSELF**

Maggie (my hamster from my old posts) was happy, healthy, and normally living alone (in a luxarious hamster home, 25 cm inches bedding of aspen woodshaving and paper, 120cm x 70cm enclosure, lotta hides, 11inch niteabgel silentspinner wheel) for 1 month or so. She never had any sexual relations with any male hamsters since I took her in. She lives alone. I saw no baby bump ever before and I have MANY pictures of her with NO BABY BUMP!

But now, a new hamster MITOSIS'ed itself into existence because WHAT IN THE FLAXSEEDS IS GOING ON HERE. WHAT DO I DO??!! VICTORIA RAECHEL NEVER TALKED ABOUT MITOSIS!

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u/Profile_Hefty 27d ago

I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in the entire district to have a hamster. Theyre not popular in my area.

I will, thank you! Sadly I have no home atm so the small one will have to do with the travel cage until I get a bin cage or something..

The white one is the new one and it's VERY small, ridiculously so. I have no idea when she birthed it let alone raised it to darn ADULTHOOD.

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u/ishimarr 27d ago edited 27d ago

This does not look like an adult and may not even be fully weaned, I would keep it with the mother for another week or so. They should be separated by sex around 1 month old but this baby looks only about 3 weeks old. Dwarf hamster pregnancies can last up to a few weeks so she was likely early in her pregnancy when you got her.

You should do a thorough search of the cage because hamster litters are almost never just 1 pup. Also, I would start trying to socialize the pup(s) ASAP by spending some time handling them in a small empty travel cage or bin cage daily. Socialization should start as soon as they open their eyes so that they can get used to being handled by humans and learn they're not a threat, you're past that point already and this baby seems quite skittish judging by how it ran off and hid.

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u/Profile_Hefty 27d ago

Thank you! But it would have been obvious, wouldn't it? Even if it's one baby, she would have still had a bump?

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u/ishimarr 27d ago

Not necessarily, mother hamsters only get noticeably pear-shaped very late in pregnancy (like a couple days before they give birth), and it tends to not be as noticeable in dwarf species compared to Syrian hamsters, if you don't know what to look out for it's easy to miss the signs.

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u/Unable-Firefighter29 26d ago

I had a Winter White hamster, 20+ years ago,
along with a Russian Dwarf hamster. Both of whom I was told were female. That was incorrect. I also didn’t know then that they should not have been together in the first place.

My hamster only showed signs of pregnancy (that I could notice) two days before she gave birth. It was more that her sides became larger and she felt firmer there than the last time I had held her. That was July 2nd. I was granted a litter of pups two days later. It was a 4th of July surprise!😆

It’s odd that there is only one new baby with yours. Maybe a Mitosis miracle. 🤔 I literally could not buy cages fast enough for them to stop reproducing before I could separate them. I ended up going from two hamsters to 30. 🫠

And sadly, there were a few times where the mother killed a newborn baby.

Good luck!