i'm going to get a male and a female hamster this Friday anf they are siblings. How long does mating take place? I know they might kill each other so I must watch them carefully and should I seperate them if fighting starts? What does mating look like?

~Caroline~ ;)

I wonder when I should put them togther. They are already mature I think in 4 weeks or soemthing I'll have to check with the person I'm getting them from. I'm really nervous-I want them to not fight or anything bad
~Caroline~ :)

dont breed siblings, they will be inbred and obviously that is bad and can lead to a number of different problems. hamsters are cheap enough to get a couple that are unrelated are safer to breed together.

i had 2 hamsters. i bought a male and then i bought a female. seperated and the female was pregnant with her brothers kids! the babies hamsters did okay, i kept one but he died a week after i weened him. he was eating and everything. dont breed them, to much trouble. my friend had a male and female together and they had one baby. he didnt remove the male and the baby was dead. the pair always fights. i think 1 hamster per cage is perfect.

They are right. It is better not to breed siblings. I assume that these are Syrian hamsters? They should be kept individually. Mating can take place in the blink of an eye with most small mammals. I'm not going to describe what it looks like because it's the same as with all mammals. Syrian hamsters will fight although the younger ones are less likely to do so, at least at first. Adults really don't tolerate each other. While they can breed at a month or so old, it's better to wait until they're a few months old at least. They're still babies themselves.

do you mean siberian dwarf hamsters robyn? i saw on animal planet or something that they both care for the babies and pair for life. i think thats what it was like it was years a ago.

oh umm okay, thanks. I dont know what type they are yet. I guess I'll just get the female and buy a male, should I do that?
~caroline~ :lol:

sure, if you seperate them of courase. hamster fights can be REALLY bad and sometimes hamsters are killed so if you want another hamster you shopuld keep it seperate. you can get 2 females if you want at the same time.

But then when should I put them together? I don't think I can buy another one after all, but I think I have a plan: I'll ask a friend if they want to breed hamsters too, and since I'm adopting a male and a female my friend can have any gender and bring their hamster over one day to mate. Hamster mating doesn't look ta all like fighting does it?

well all i know from experience is you should only breed hamsters if you have a large space for them and can keep the babies. Otherwise, the babies will get killed by the male or the female will beat up the male. and the rest of the time they fight. you can get 2 hamsters just keep them sepreate. did you plan mating them and keeping the babies?

what i did was put the 2 together until she looked pregnant, then put him in his own cage so she could have and raise them in peace. i bred the big ones though, not dwarves, i have found the dwarf ones to be much more aggressive towards people, at least all the ones i have ever dealt with.

i breed the short hair ones. they are my favorite. doesnt it take about 20 days for the babies to be born?

hamster gestation period is actullay the shortest of all mammals, only 2 weeks.

when my female was pregnant i thought she was just overweight, then i saw the babies and was happy. she was a very good parent and protected her babies from going in tubes in the tank and stuff. i think some parents will not care, or kill there babies.

infanticide is almost always caused by one or a combination of the following: too little food/water/space, stress (including too much handling of the parent or the babies), and males. with males it is usually from a male that doesnt know that/if th ebabies are his. one example is when i had my breeding pair of rats. both were in a 10 gallon, he was always with her. there was no chance they were another male's babies, so he didnt bother them, EVER. however i would not try that with a male that hasnt been with her th eentire tim esince conception. he does not know they are his and will kill them. not only to kill what are possibly another male's babies, but also to bring her back into estrus (possibility to get pregnant) sooner so he can mate with her and sh ecan have his babies. it is all evolutionarily beneficial to kill babies that arent yours (if you are a male). this is present in lions, hippos, rodents, and even humans. it has been shown that a male is more liekly to beat his step children than he is to beat his own children. (i know when anything like this is applied to humans there are lots of exceptions, but this is a proven TREND, not a rule, just an observaeble trend.) and all of this goes back to spreading your genes better than the next individual, and evolution. wow, i didnt think i was going to go on that long when i started this reply.

i know what you are talking about. there point in life is to spread there genes.

thats any organism's point in life. reproduce more successfully than everyone else, or try to.

Thats also why rams and other animals usually compete over a females. i saw this thing on discovery channel where a snake was mating with another and then a more dominant snake came and stole the female from him. the babies some babies had 1 snakes gene, the others had the more dominant ones gene.

females are the limiting factor. because they put so much more energy into the babies they limit the rate of reproduction, so every female is a potential baby (or more depending on species), so its worth fighting for.

I'm female, and nobody's fighting for me! They fight to keep me away.

Well, back on topic. Tommy, the commonly sold hamster is the Syrian hamster. They are solitary. The dwarf Siberian hamsters like I had are being sold more and more. They can be kept a pair together or a harem or a few of the same sex together. I had first three girls and later three boys. They did fight but not to the death like Syrians can. Mine were not aggressive to me but did bite a few times. I've never had a Syrian.

Okay. I am not going to buy another male actually, I'll just see if a friend is getting a male. I heard that these hamsters can mate really quick sometimes you wont even notice right? I'll just put the female with the male and then take the female out to put her back in her own cage and then keep a few babies if she has babies and give the rest away to friends who can care for them.

then your going to need a new tank for almost every baby. what type of hamster are you getting? Robyn isnt the syrian hamster also known as a golden hamster or something? i think i know what your talking about. Is your friend getting a male at the same shop as you? I dont think you should breed the, the female will never be the same. after my young female had babies she would never let me hold her without her biting me and the babies have to be weened and stuff.

I have no clue what type of hamster, probably Syrian I think. I didn't see them yet. I am not buying a hamster. My firend might, I have to ask her if she plans to yet. None of my rodents in the past have ever not bitten me. For some reason whatever rodent I get is almost "wild" and bites hard except for my past Siberian hamster. (I couldn't even touch my rat once I got her in her cage!)

how old was the rat when you got her?

if your friend has any questions she can ask us.

Okay I'll tell my friend that. I'm not sure how old my rat was, but she wasn't a baby she was already big, but not old. I don't know why she died, maybe a stroke or heart attack? :(

it is best to get them as close to their wean date as possible, if not on the wean date. thats when i took pinky from her parents and put her by herself and she is very nice.

Oh wow never knew that. Yeah when I bought my rat there were no babies I think. all of them were already a bit big. ;)

i may eventually get hamsters again. i would love to get a pair of siberian dwarfs. i have 3 old hamster tanks in my garage that should be stocked... :lol: i will probably get a pair, breed them, and then seperate the males and females. that would be cool!

Yeah that would be cool. I got my two hamsters yedterday. They ar eso cute I named the female "Whisper" and the male "Dusty". The female is black with a bit of white on her ear. I just put them together in a big cage beacsue my other cage is so small and I couldn't find the metal piece to attach the water bottle to the small cage so I had to, they like company I think. :D

they are going to like eachother's company a little too much. are they brother and sister?

Yeah...but they didnt seem very interested in each other. (they just went their own way and such and such) They just stay next to each other when sleeping for warmth. :)

caroline why dont you listen to us? :( :huh: you really should, the babies will have genetic problems and its pretty likely that they will breed. they are like guppies! please seperate them.

caroline we know what we are talking about, please listen! we have kept hamsters for years. we all know what they will do if you keep them there so please seperate them. what kind of hamsters are they? how old? if you are going to ask stuff and ignore our suggestions why do you post questions?

Okay, I put them together because I had to, cuz I couldn't get the water bottle up in the male's cage.

cant you get another cage? please you really should seperate them, they will have babies and most of them will have problems and die. can you answer my questions please. you really should listen to us, we know what we are talikng about. the female could even be preganant already. :(

they may not seem interested in eachother for mating right now because she may not be in estrus, as soon as she is he will know and do his job as a male.

yes, it may be okay now becuase they could be young. but hamsters can reach sexual maturity fast. or they could still be adjusting to there new environment and not want to breed yet.

even if they are old enough she isnt always in estrus, so there are periods of time where she isnt fertile, he knows it, and wont bother trying to impregnate her.

Yeah okay. I separated them, I found a way. For now my male hamster is drinking out of a water dish, but each day I still give him a turn on the bottle. He seems happy. thanks
;)