get!
*swats fly and misses*
Ugh
so there are a lot of people who currently have a hamster and they're on
a budget or somebody owns a hamster and they're looking to provide their hamster
with what they require but they don't want to spend hundreds of dollars or
maybe they can't afford to spend hundreds of dollars. Keep in mind any pet
you own there's no such thing as a free pet every pet is going to have a
reoccurring cost hamsters for example are always going to be needing food and
bedding throughout their entire lifetime to start off hamsters need large cages
and you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on a large cage right one of my
favorite options is actually a bin cage this is made from a 110 QT
bin this has about 530 square inches of floor space so it is above the bare
minimum but I wouldn't exactly consider it large but if you're coming from
somebody who has had their hamster in a critter trail its whole life and this is
what you can only upgrade to this is obviously much much better than keeping
your hamster in that critter trail its whole life bin cages can be made for
$20 to $30 and I have a tutorial on how you can exactly make one
because they do need a lid you can't just keep the lid off of it. Next is
bedding this is one of the reoccurring costs are going to have to purchase
throughout your hamsters lifetime and you're gonna want to make sure you're
providing your hamster with a safe and deep substrate in their enclosure a lot
of people see how large a hamsters cage needs to be and then they hear how much
bedding that you need to provide in their cage and they start to think that
it's going to end up costing them a lot of money which is in fact wrong you
having a larger cage and using more bedding can actually save you more money
so this right here is a 99 liter bag of paper-based bedding and I
picked this up for $31 that might sound like a lot of money but
this can last you a very long time if you just owned one hamster and also keep
in mind that you should never be cleaning your hamsters
cage fully once a week like a lot of people think you're supposed to a
hamster cage that meets the bare minimum should never be cleaned out more than
once a month and if you do need to clean out their bedding once a month then you
should be doing a half clean never a full clean because full cleans are
actually very stressful towards the hamster you're removing all of their
scent so doing a half clean is much better
I personally actually rarely ever clean my hamsters cages which sounds bad
but as long as you are spot cleaning your hamsters cage and removing sections
that have been soiled there is nothing wrong with that and the bedding is
actually very clean the next thing is accessories and this is a fun one
because you can get as creative as you want to you can make toys for super
cheap with cardboard and other materials here are cardboard tubes these are
perfect for tunnels depending on the size of your hamster some Syrians can
fit through these some cannot but you can find larger paper tubes these are
great as well because if a hamster chews on it it's not going to hurt them and
they're great to destroy and you can take these and you can actually make
them into other different types of hamster toys there are literally
hundreds on the internet so many different DIYs you can even make your
own hamster hide out this is just simply made from a cardboard box I cut a little
hole and a little window and I decorated it a bit this is a another type of
DIY this is just made with toilet paper and I have done a tutorial a very very
long time ago but this is a fun one for hamsters because it's made out of toilet
paper and a lot of the times the hamster is going to destroy it and use it for
nesting so it can kind of keep them busy for a bit but there are so many
different DIYs that you can do for so cheap I also recommend you look in
dollar stores and thrift stores for items they don't necessarily have to say
made for a hamster to be usable by a hamster
there's lots of different jars and containers and lots of different things
that can honestly be used for hamsters for food dishes sand baths or even
hideouts this jar right here could actually be a really cool sand bath it's
enclosed so the hamster will enjoy bathing in it or this container here is
really large and can be great for a sand bath as well and both of these items are
super cheap another thing I suggest is buying used hamster supplies oftentimes
on websites like Craigslist.com, Kijiji.ca or Gumtree.com people will have had a hamster
and it's now passed and they have the hamster supplies and they don't know
what to do with it because they don't want to get another hamster so they put
it up for sale for way cheaper than you would buy it in the pet store this is
perfectly safe to buy all you have to do is just make sure you wash all of the
plastic items with some hot soapy water and if there's any wooden items you can
bake it in the oven at a low temperature make your own hamster treats instead of
going into the pet store and buying a $5 bag of hamster treats make your own you
just need to make sure the ingredients are safe but there's so many different
recipes on the internet for hamster treats and you can make them as healthy
as you want if you have a safe pesticide free tree in your backyard you can
actually cut off branches and make your own hamster chew toys you just need to
make sure the treat is safe you can use branches from trees such as apple, willow,
grape, Kiwi, poplar, elm or aspen trees and then you need to sanitize them which
you can easily do by boiling it or baking it in the oven and then your
hamster can chew on them you can also grow your own fruits and vegetables for
your hamster to feed them as extras it's also a lot healthier of an option
because you are growing it yourself so you know what is going into it you don't
have to put any fertilizers or pesticides or weedicides in it so you
know it's going to be the best for your hamster
if you're also interested in giving your hamster things like wheat, oat and flax
spray you can actually grow these yourself all you need is some oat grass
wheat grass or flax seeds and all you gotta do is plant those in the ground
and then wait for them to grow and they will develop into the sprays that you
would buy in the store and it's going to cost you a lot less so as you can see
you can easily provide your hamster with what they require so using "I can't
afford" it as an excuse not to give your hamster what they require just really
isn't acceptable because there are many ways around that so I really hope this
video is able to help anybody who is wanting to budget for their hamster or
save some more money so that they can buy other things for their other animals
or whatever you want to do so yeah guys thank you for watching bye