General hamster question!

[sunset555]

Hi, this is a general question please. My daughters siberian hamster just died, and through the grief she asked us to buy her another one, so off to the petstore we went and bought a male russian dwarf hamster age about 6 months old. We decided next day to get a companion for him and went back to same store and bought a little 3 month old russian dwarf hamster, they got on fine and played for hours, a bit of fighting and sqeeking here and there, but overall the behaviour was fine between them both, until I noticed the bigger hamster on the back of the smaller one constantly, so I took the smaller one out and examined the sex of it again, and it appears to be a female!!! luckily we have two cages so I seperated them both. Obviously the petstore assistant hadnt a clue about sexing the hamsters, I just worked it out from youtube!!!

Anyhow, now Im stuck with two hammies and in two seperate cages, when all we wanted for our daughter was a couple of russian dwarf hamsters of the same sex for company for each other.

Could the female have gotten pregnant so quickly by the male????

On two minds what to do, might just keep the both but in seperate cages, either that or bring the female one back to the store tomorrow and change for a male to keep other company.

Sorry for all questions, but still educating myself on these little guys... All suggestions are welcome, thank you for taking the time to read this..

Lol, Sharon X

[Arnold L Goldman, D.V.M.]

Same sex hamsters at sexual maturity may fight if their tank or cage is small.
Opposite sex hamsters will, well you've seen that already. You could simply return one
and allow her to own just the one. They dont seem to mind living alone.
By the way hamster lifespan is 24 months.

Dr G

[mamajo76]

Yes I think you should take her back to the store and trade for a boy.  That shounds reasonable to me.  Now you have 2 lonely hamsters or if you put them back together will have lots of hamster babies!