because i had so much fun creating my petsmart cage reviews video in this style i figured i would
do something similar except this time i'm going to be looking at some of amazon's top rated hamster
cages and giving my opinions on them
so let's dive right in the first cage we're looking at is the kaytee crittertrail two level habitat
and this is a very very classic hamster cage and it has been sold
for as long as i have been owning hamsters
on amazon it sells for $72.99 us dollars
and the outer measurements provided is
20 inches (50.8cm) by 11.5 (29cm) inches by 16 inches (40.6cm)
which gives us a total of around 260 square inches of floor space
keep in mind many of these measurements are the outer measurements
so the internal floor space is actually going to be even slightly less than this
so on amazon this cage has a 4.5 star rating and it has 2,125 reviews
here are just a couple of the five star reviews i found on it
hamster loves it and so do i.
very sturdy and made with a nice hard plastic
hamster out grew its smaller cage and needed a new one
i really don't want to know what the previous cage was if this was an upgrade
wasn't sure if he would go through all the tubes or just stick with the bottom but he explores throughout it daily
and loves every section of it easy to put together just takes patience
as a consumer i love that you can add it to and looks like it's a lot of fun for the little guy
highly recommend
great for kids
we have this cage from six years ago for my son and just bought the second one for my daughter
we love the case at the top for carrying the hamsters around, the only difficult part is the tubes fit really tight together
and can take a bit to pop out for cleaning but overall we love these cages
if you've been on my channel before you probably already know my husbandry standards when it comes to hamsters
and that i personally believe that hamsters need large enclosures
so solely based off of the fact that this enclosure has such little floor space
i would never ever purchase this or consider it suitable for a hamster
but there actually are other reasons that make this an inappropriate cage for a hamster
one being the base of the enclosure is only a three inch pan
this just simply is not deep enough to put an appropriate amount of bedding for the hamster to burrow
because hamsters are burrowing animals and it's a really great enrichment for them
another thing is the wheel that it comes with i really wish that manufacturers would stop
making cages and including wheels in them because it's a waste of money for them to
make a wheel because they're not making it an appropriate size therefore hamster owners are not
able to use these wheels for their hamsters they're going to have to remove this wheel
chuck it in the garbage or just never use it again and replace it with something proper size
because the wheel that this enclosure comes with is only a six inch (15cm) wheel and too small
of a wheel can cause a hamster to curve their back and because of how often the wheel is used this is
going to cause like severe back pain and in worst case scenario it can even cause herniated discs
this enclosure is pretty tall and with a lack of floor space that means you're going to be able to
fit less enrichment into the enclosure, the less enrichment you have the more likely you are to
have a bored and unhappy hamster
a bored and unhappy hamster leads to stress and boredom behaviors one being monkey barring
and because this cage is so tall a hamster can definitely climb the bars all the way to the top
and because hamsters aren't the greatest at climbing
they definitely can let go and that can very easily injure themselves
then of course this is a crittertrail so it comes with the classic tubes
and the factor of you can expand it
one thing i know about critter trails in the tubes a lot of hamsters have escaped from them before
a lot of the times the connectors will become loose they can easily pop them off or even
hamsters have chewed the connectors and escaped that way
and another thing is that the tubes that come with these enclosures is only a diameter of 2.25 inches (5.7cm) wide
this is not wide enough for a syrian hamster to comfortably go through
and actually poses a couple of risks like getting stuck or even injuring themselves when they try to go through a tube
with full cheeks
moving on to the next enclosure we have the critterville arcade hamster home
that is going for 57.99 us dollars
and measures 18.1 inches (46cm) by 11.4 inches (29cm) by 21.5 inches (54.6cm)
giving us a total of 206 square inches of floor space approximately
this cage on amazon has a rating of 4 stars and has 3,765 reviews
here is just one of the reviews that i found on it
cute and functional
our little hammy loves his new cage it's so cute we had a traditional cage prior with three doors and it was horrible
my kids would leave them open and he would escape
so i thought this one would be so much better so they can see him more and it only has one gate
which is on the top of the cage so if left open he can't escape
so far so great he loves the little hide he sleeps so cozy in it he hasn't chewed on anything like his prior cage
i would buy this again without a doubt
does- do they not realize that hamsters can indeed climb
and if you left the
door open on the top they certainly could escape out of that very easily
on the website i did find
it funny that they wrote this little blurb
"the easy to clean plastic base is designed to be deep enough to contain messes
and give your hamster room to burrow and run"
and it's a 3.5 inch (8.8cm) base
that is not enough room to burrow and i don't know why these companies continue
to think that this is enough room to burrow
i do know that when hamsters were first coming into the pet trade it was very popular to just
put enough bedding for them to make a little bit of a nest and then use the bathroom on it
but we have since then learned that deep bedding is super important and it just provides a lot of
enrichment to a hamster
once again we got another wheel that just isn't suitable for the hamster it's a 6.5 inch (16.5cm) wheel
this isn't going to be large enough
please keep in mind there actually is no such thing as too big of a wheel for a hamster
in fact the bigger the wheel usually the better as long as it is a very easy to spin wheel
and dwarf hamsters often will find that they have more control over a bigger wheel than a smaller wheel
which is why you'll often see when they're running in say a 6.5 inch (16.5cm) wheel
you'll see that they're very likely to fly out of these wheels
so once again based on all of these factors i would never buy this enclosure for a hamster
nor would i consider it a suitable hamster cage
moving on we have the ferplast hamster combi one cage
that goes for $40.59 us dollars
with the measurements of 15.9 inches (40.3cm) by 11.6 inches (29cm) by 8.6 inches (22cm)
wait that's like
hang on
that's literally this tall
that is this tall that's like my head is literally almost the same size as
that height
well that gives us around a total of 184 square inches of floor space
this enclosure also has 4 stars and 249 reviews
and here is just a couple
the cage is very difficult to put together but it is so worth it my gerbils love it
he loves it
most of the time when a person buys a hamster and gets it a cage they get it a small-
they get it a small cage that they can just sit in with a water bottle and food bowl
this hamster loves this cage and he hasn't tried to chew his way out so far
i can say that the price for it was less than what i can get at a normal pet store
but i like the cage and he likes the cage and i might get some extensions for this cage so that
there can be room for another and babies
oh boy
babies
good luck
i love reading what the manufacturer says about the enclosure so here's just a little blurb
"combi1 is a hamster cage that is small but contains everything you need to keep lively rodents at home"
uh what
lively rodents
do do you mean keeping a depressed and very sad rodent in this enclosure
because there literally is no room for anything else
based on how tall this cage is it's quite likely that that base is about 3 inches (7.6cm)
and it kind of gets wrecked
because of the placement of things of where the tubes are they're super low on the base and then the wheel
can't go any higher so you literally can only put a layer of bedding you can't even fill it up to
the top of the enclosure
someone also answered on amazon and said that the wheel is 5.5 inches (14cm) wide which is
way too small
remember a Syrian hamster can be 6 to 7 maybe even 8 inches (15-20cm) long
how are they going to fit on a 5.5 inch (14cm) wheel
how
and in fact i'm not shocked at this at all but someone's hamster even started to chew its way out
are you surprised
and last but not least we have the ferplast laura small hamster cage that goes for $56.24 us dollars
and has the measurements of 18.1 inches (46cm) by 11.6 inches (29cm) by 14.8 inches (37.5cm)
giving you 209 square inches of floor space
this cage has 4.5 stars on amazon with 725 reviews
this cage was amazing for my syrian hamster
the only thing was that she never used the wheel
probably because it's not big enough
she didn't like the house and the water bottle didn't fit where we put the cage
my hamster recently was diagnosed with cancer in her liver and womb making her stomach larger
but she was still able to climb in the tube
why would you let her
she loved climbing the wall of the cage she was nibbling on the wires and even though she had strong teeth
the wires didn't break
she adored the cage and i would definitely buy it again
ah this hurts my heart
this is a person who
doesn't understand the behaviours their hamster is showing
and thinks that these are behaviors that indicate a happy hamster when in fact it's quite frankly the opposite
and this hamster quite clearly was showing signs that they likely needed more enrichment and more space
and i can't blame the owner because a lot of these behaviors are not
talked about as bad behaviors and because they happen so often they're seen as just normal hamster behaviors
but they're not normal they are just super common
and it's a sign of an unhappy and bored hamster
so finally a manufacturer has listed how deep the base is and they go
a deep
3.25 inch (8cm) plastic base
since when was 3.25 inches (8cm) considered deep
the wheel size is also unknown though based on the other ferplast cage it's likely also 5.5 inches (14mc) or 6 inches (15cm) so
once again not to continue to repeat myself but it's just it's not large enough for a hamster to run on
the tube diameter of this enclosure is 2.4 inches (6cm) wide and once again that's not large enough for a
Syrian hamster to comfortably go through you want to make sure the diameter of a tube is at least
2.75 inches (7cm) for a syrian hamster
a commonality you'll see with all these cages is a lot of them have the ability to expand and connect
and i really really don't like this
i think this is companies preying on the fact that hamster owners are going to want to give their hamsters more
they're going to want to spoil them give them more space therefore they are going to want to go out
and buy other attachments for the hamster
and if they're buying the attachments and more tubes that is generating more money for the company
and the thing is with getting these attachments is sure it is definitely better if you attach two of these cages
than just having one i'll give you that
but it is still not benefiting the hamster to the best ability
because of the way these cages are designed and the flaws that they have
when you are connecting multiple of these cages it is creating broken floor space
and you also have the issue of none of these cages had a proper sized base
none of them were able to provide a hamster the ability to burrow
a lot of these cages also have such little floor space you're not going to be able to fit the things that i mentioned earlier
you may be able to fit one accessory per cage that you have and that's just
not a great hamster setup and the most concerning part about this
is the fact that all of these cages have such high star ratings
so when someone goes on to amazon looking for a hamster cage
they're like wow this cage has like four stars that is a pretty decent rating
and they read the reviews and there's a lot of good reviews on these cages and
they're gonna buy one and i think that is such a waste of money when they can be looking into actual
good proper cages but the thing is there are not a ton of
appropriate sized hamster cages on amazon i'm gonna say there's like maybe
two or three and they definitely are not the top cages that come up when you search hamster cage on Amazon
so in my opinion i would never recommend somebody go out and buy these cages because i
just think they're a waste of money because you are buying an inappropriate hamster cage
and if you're wondering what cages i do recommend i would recommend large bin cages
aquariums and terrariums
NiteAngel bigger world cage
living world eco green cage
the ferplast criceti 100
some of the paw hut wooden cages
ikea hacks like the ikea pax, ikea detolf, ikea linnmon
and diy enclosures
so i hope you guys have enjoyed this video and i will see you in my next one bye