before i get started with today's video i have to share with you guys this new children's book that
we were just gifted
who has a pet hamster
not only does this book have beautiful illustrations but i think it's one of the first children's books to
show proper hamster care throughout the book it introduces you to the basic hamster care
as well as shows you the importance of visiting a vet
i think this book would make a great addition to grade school classrooms, any parents with
young children or even if you have younger siblings who want to learn more about hamsters
so if you're interested in purchasing the book for yourself i'll leave the link down in the
description bar below and now on to the video
i've made videos very similar to this one before but i think this is a topic that is super important
to continue to talk about
in my last video where i shared all of my hamster supplies a lot of people become overwhelmed with how much hamster stuff i have
and sometimes it upsets them because maybe they don't have as much hamster stuff currently
but i don't think a lot of people realize is i've been owning hamsters for 12 years
and i did not start off with that much stuff
so because a lot of new people come onto my channel and they just watch my newest videos seeing the current care i have and not
my extremely old outdated videos it's important for me to kind of
take you along and show you that i also started off with incorrect care, dangerous products,
making my own homemade stuff
small cages and barely any enrichment
so i started off owning hamsters in 2009/2010 my first hamster was a long-haired male syrian hamster named Buddy
and he unfortunately did have to live in some small cages
he lived in an extreme crittertrail cage, he lived in a habitrail ovo pod
and i think he also lived in a part of a tank for a while, he had a wire wheel, he had the cotton
fluff, no enrichment, the whole the whole shebang
it really wasn't until i got my hamster Pumpkin my short-haired male syrian hamster
where my care started to change
so i got pumpkin in 2011 and the enclosure that he was in is actually the one that i use for educational videos
on small cages now which is super unfortunate
but thankfully i had joined some hamster forms and immediately learned about all of the mistakes that i was doing
so eventually that leads me to asking my parents to build bin cages because i thought they would be a really good idea
to upgrade my hamster's enclosures and give them a bigger space
and so that brings us to this video this is my first cage tour video in 2012
when i moved pumpkin into a bin cage. i think the bin cage probably has
i wanna say around
290 to 300 square inches of floor space so it is still small
but it definitely is better than the living world cage i was using
and you can see in the video the cage is just
it's it's not great honestly the-
i have half paper bedding and then i have half shredded paper bedding
because at the time i was trying to save money and i'm sure it was only like this thick of bedding
all we got in there is we have an igloo, a six inch silent runner or a silent spinner wheel not large enough
a homemade level with a kleenex box on top which is fine
but i don't think pumpkin actually could fit in that
and then i just have a dish with a bunch of food in it and the diet is super bland so that was like
that was what i thought was a good cage in 2012.
once you join the hamster community and you start seeing everybody else's cages it really
makes you always want to upgrade your cages and make them bigger every single time
so three months later may of 2012 my dad built me a wooden
hamster enclosure it was like a double decker for
one hamster on top one hamster on bottom and i think it had 360 square inches of floor space
so not a huge upgrade but kind of an upgrade
now this was an interesting cage um
it was amazing that my dad built it but the whole front piece was mesh
all the way to the bottom so i couldn't put a lot of bedding without it all falling out when you open the door
or even if the hamster walked by the mesh
so unfortunately i did have to put only a slight amount of bedding
and once again it's still just super
boring we got the six inch silent spinners for both of the syrian hamsters i got
some tunnels, a tube, chew toys and igloo
that is literally all that is in there
then a whole year later in 2013
i went ahead and asked my parents if we could use their 100-gallon aquarium that was just sitting outside collecting dust
so they went ahead and lugged that in to the house for me
and i built a divider to divide it in half for each of my hamsters and that gave them each about
570 square inches of floor space
so that was a little bit better but once again i just i i didn't fill it with
a lot of stuff my cages seem to keep getting bigger and bigger throughout this time period
and a lot of the stuff the enrichment just stays the same
so in this one at least i have the eight inch Wodent wheels
for each of the syrians still not quite big enough but way better than the 6 inch
i have slightly a bit more bedding i think probably like this much
and then we got like a bendable bridge
igloo,
a bridge, a tunnel, a water bottle, and some food and some chews
still very boring
in 2014 i went ahead and gave the entire 100 gallon tank to just one hamster so that is
1,152 square inches of floor space so that was great
but once again
it got bigger i put a couple more accessories in but it was nowhere near anything for the hamster to do
we've got the eight inch wodent wheel, we've got a hideout, bendable bridge, another log, puzzle playground
it's so boring it's- i-
it's then in 2016 i got my first Ikea detolf i had my two hybrid dwarf hamsters living in this enclosure
this is not something that i would recommend or ever do again i personally think that all hamsters do best alone in captivity
when i look at this cage i do think it is slightly better than the previous years but it still is so boring
and it's just
there's nothing for the hamsters to actually, do if it makes sense
the only thing they really could do is run on the wheel
which for some reason i went back to using the six-inch
silent spinners for the dwarfs i don't know why
and there still just isn't really a lot of bedding for them
it wasn't until 2018 where i started learning more about german hamster care and that's when i kind of created my first
german inspired hamster cage with a cage that we had made from an old dresser it had around 660 square inches of floorspace
and the hamster that lived in there was tater tot my robovski
this cage i was really really proud of because i did add a lot more enrichments for the first time ever and i did get to witness
a hamster actually burrowing for once up until then i literally
never seen a hamster burrow and i always was like oh my hamsters just don't like burrowing
well that's what happens when you don't provide your hamster with enough bedding
so in this enclosure i actually have a sand bath, i've got a cork log, some grapevine wood,
i put in some orchard grass hay for nesting, i also have some willow for them to chew
it still doesn't have as much enrichments one thing that i had with it is these popsicle stick fences and those i will never use again
my past hamster aspen actually tried to jump the fence
and she got her leg caught in between and so she had a broken leg for a little bit and so i will never
use popsicle sticks ever again after that incident
so still in 2018 i was using my ikea detolf for my female syrian hamster honey
and i also had made this a natural
enclosure so i was definitely moving in the right direction with the ikea detolf it definitely is a lot harder to
make a great cage setup due to the height and the width but i definitely was doing my best
unfortunately because of the wheel as well i had to slope the bedding which is not
really my favorite thing now i really like to keep bedding depth even throughout the entire
enclosure but i do have a sand bath, i do have a decent amount of bedding i think that's at least
eight to nine inches on the one side as well as i also have grapevine wood and cork logs
some shavings on one side for a different texture, i've got the willow leaves
and i think i even have
a two chamber hideout that i made myself because at
the time 2018 there actually was not a lot of multi-chamber hideouts for sale
then in 2019 i finally built my diy enclosure that has 1,152 square inches of floor space
very similar to the 100 gallon aquarium that i once had
this enclosure was for my female syrian hamster Bumble who i just found was showing a lot of stress signs in the ikea detolf
and i was super unhappy with the fact that i couldn't put a lot of bedding the width kept
making you not be able to set the cage up the way i wanted to set it up
so that's why i went with this enclosure i love the height of this enclosure and the width
i can actually make decent setups with it
now with this enclosure when i take a look at it i'm like wow
that looks like such a large enclosure and it's so funny because i have the exact same sized
enclosure now
and i definitely feel like it looks smaller because i've just been able to actually create better hamster cage setups
while this cage setup isn't the worst it definitely
could be improved a lot there's a lot of open spaces that i could have filled i do have a lot of different things
and then in 2020 i got my long-haired syrian hamster Lenny and this was his
first cage setup
it actually once again is not that great of a setup i mean it's decent we've got a
six-chamber multi-chamber hideout in there for him he's got an 11-inch wodent wheel,
a nice big sand bath, he's got grapevine wood and cork logs and another hideout
but i just see so much potential
i could have put so much more enrichment in there for him because once again there's not a ton of stuff for lenny to actually do
and then that brings us to 2022 and my enclosures and how they look right now
so starting off with Mabel's enclosure which is the same size
as my other diy enclosures and as you can see it just looks so much better it's a lot fuller
which some people have an issue with but these enclosures
and the setups they have right now is what works for them
it is not too crowded for them they like how everything is set up there are different pathways for them to get around things
and they use every inch of the enclosure
as you can see i have many different substrates i have at least four no i have five
one two- i have five different substrates for Mabel to be able to go in
dig, feel the textures we've got moss in there as well, grapevine wood, platforms,
a six-chamber multi-chamber hideout we've got a 12-inch silent runner in there for her, cork logs as well as tunnels that go underneath into the ground
as well as a peekaway hideout for her so there's just so much more we also sprinkle her food everywhere and she's got herbs
and sprays for her to forage for so this is just
such a long ways it's taken me to get to this type of enclosure
same goes for dipper's enclosure he just has so much
also both of my syrian hamsters i think their enclosures have at least 13 inches of bedding if not more
i haven't measured it recently i just know it's around that
dipper also has about four different substrates in there for him to dig in,
he's got different ceramics, he's got 11 inch wooden wheel, different hideouts, cork logs,
grapevine wood um another six chamber multi-chamber hideout
he's also got um sprays and forage so there's just so much more for him to do
and last but not least we have a waddle's enclosure his is adapted more for his chinese hamster-ness
so there's a lot more grapevine wood for him to actually climb on there's more
little bridges, he still has different substrates as well- not nearly as much as the syrian hamsters but he still has
different ones other than sand, he also has a really deep bedding i'm pretty sure it's 10 inches all the way through if not more
he also has an 11 inch wodent wheel
and sprays and herbs and food sprinkled everywhere
and it's not a bunch of open space so that he's not feeling super timid when he comes out at night
so that has been the evolution of my cage setups and this is a reminder that it took me
12 years
to get to this point in my hamster care
so when you see my newest videos please try to keep in mind that
it is definitely possible to get to this point but it doesn't always
happen overnight. Any sort of progress in your hamster care is good progress
it doesn't matter if it's just something small if you instead start to sprinkle your hamster's food instead of feeding them in a food dish
that is good progress
i really hope this video will help people to understand that it literally doesn't happen overnight
this took me so long to get to this point and i am still continuing to learn and grow with the care that i have for my hamsters
i hope in two more years i can do this video again and be like wow look at the care that i had in 2022 i'm doing so much better
i hope i can say that
so yeah i will see you guys in my next video bye