hamster might pregnant

[animalgurlxx]

my friends hamster might pregnant the ppl she got it off said she's getting bigger
i wanted to know wut kind of stuff to give her for a nest and how b4 she has the babies (if she is preg.) and all the weaning stuff and then when it's time to take them away.and if there something i'm forgetting tell me that too

and do hamster get mean when there preg. b/c she was nice up till a while go
i'm going to try to hold her tonite if she comfable with me petting her (i hope she dont bite me or i'll have to hide that from my mom :( )

[FuzzyLuvr]

Awww, it sounds like you're in the same boat that i was around this time exactly one year ago! We bought a hamster during Spring Break and she was big (we wanted to get our money's worth!) but something was weird.... The Petco employees said she might be pregnant. They told us to feel her and stuff and keep an eye out for about a MONTH... Well, 2-3 days after we purchased her, she had 7 babies!!! Well, you're not supposed to handle the mom right before she has kids. We didn't know, but she seemed to be fine. What you should do is get her lots of bedding and a nice, secluded, quiet place to be. Make sure the cage is nice and clean and dry before she gives birth. For nesting material i've always used just regular old pine shavings, they seem to work fine. Make sure she has enough FOOD and WATER, too.
After she gives birth to the babies, LEAVE THEM ALONE! DO NOT TOUCH THEM! THis is extremely important because if you do the mother might kill them or shun them and not take care of them. .... She might even eat them.... Don't touch the babies until they are able to move about themselves, preferrably when their eyes open around 2-3 weeks old. Don't clean the cage stuff until ~10 days after birth. If you must, just take out soiled shavings. Make sure the cage atmosphere is nice and warm (but not TOO warm, you know). The mama will take care of everything herself. It will be fascinating watching them grow hair and when their little eyes open, OMG, you will want to cuddle them, but be wary. Watch them all closely, for at around 3-4 weeks, they should be weaned off their mother. She will start rejecting their advances to suckle and even start nipping at them if they try to approach. It was the funniest thing with mine, a whole hoard of them were following her around the cage and she was trying to escape, lol! And the babies will start drinking from the water bottle and eating solid food too, all by themselves! So take them away from their mom, and around 4-5 weeks, they will start sexually dimorphizing. The male testicles will start dropping and you should split them up by sexes, or they might start interbreeding at that early age!
As for getting mean, my Giblet only bit me once, drawing blood, during her pregnancy, and i think that was because hamsters are more irritable during the day when they're trying to sleep, and plus she was protecting a litter of babies, and i put my finger in there in front of her igloo, and she shot out like a friggin' COBRA, i'm not lying, and yep.... So just don't bother the mommy during pregnancy. Um, i hope this helps you :)

[FuzzyLuvr]

another thing about dividing them by sexes, sometimes it's hard to tell the males from females, and some males will not mature as fast as others, so you might think he's a girl for the longest time and put him with the other girls, which is bad! A way to tell is that the girls have 2 rows of 7 mammae spots on her belly. Her body is also rounder in back than a male's. Her vagina is close to her anus, but look at the male, his little winky is farther away from his poopie hole than the female's vagina is from her poopie hole. The males might also have an extended rear w/ a bulge under his little tail (that's where his testes will be located).....okay, yeah, so just examine the babies when they're old enough to be held, and really try to determine their sex without depending on if they have huge balls or not, and believe me, there's a huge difference. What sometimes happens is that one male will become mature, and somehow chemically being the first one, he will prevent the OTHER males from reaching maturity for a while, resulting in him being the dominant male. It's a chemical thing, i dunno.