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so a common question that I receive is how often and how should you clean your
hamsters enclosure because for many years it's been common knowledge that
you are supposed to clean your hamsters cage once a week you remove all of the
old bedding you scrub down the base with some soap and water and you will fill
that with clean and fresh bedding but since then it's been learned that this
method is actually very stressful and unnecessary for the hamster removing all
of the bedding in your hamsters enclosure is removing all of the
familiar scent to them then you're replacing it with brand new clean
bedding therefore it's making it unfamiliar to them so basically it's
like the enclosure is a completely new enclosure to them. There actually was a
university professor who did a study on hamsters and they measured their heart
rate in response to different stressful situations one of those situations
actually happened to be cleaning the hamsters entire enclosure out they
actually observed that the heart rate increased by 150 beats per minute and it
took over an hour for the hamster to calm down after. There can be a couple of
factors when it comes to figuring out how and when you should clean your
hamsters enclosure one being the size of the enclosure the larger the enclosure
the less often you are going to have to clean the enclosure of course the
smaller the enclosure the easier it is to get soiled faster factor number two
is that most hamsters are clean and organized
animals so they tend to choose a couple of areas where they are going to
consistently go to the bathroom and pee there so this makes cleaning the
enclosure a lot easier because there are only going to be a couple of spots that
you are going to need to clean out of course not every hamsters like this and
some choose to pee everywhere there are quite a few different cleaning methods
to choose from but any cage above 450 square inches of floor space should
never be cleaned out more than once a month when it does come time to do your
clean out of your hamster's enclosure you really
are only going to want to do a half clean this involves you just removing
half of the soiled bedding not all of it you do want to leave at least half of
the bedding in there because that is a familiar smell to them if you find that
your cage is still fairly clean you can choose to take out just a smaller
section of the bedding you don't have to take out half you can do a little bit
less one third works as well essentially the most important part of cleaning a
hamsters enclosure is removing the pee because pee is wet and anything wet can
grow bacteria very easily so that is the most important thing that you are
removing is any soil of pee spots this is actually one of the reasons spot
cleaning is so important because it actually can save you from having to do
full clean outs so every couple of days you want to be spot cleaning which just
involves you looking for any soiled spots in the enclosure and just removing
those out and a lot of hamsters actually use their wheel and sand baths for going
pee in so it actually makes spot cleaning a lot easier if they do have
select spots like that now when it comes to hamster poop it really isn't too much
of a big deal or issue because hamster poop isn't squishy and soft it actually
is hard and quite dry so once hamster poop comes out it basically becomes
inert of course if you see an area in your enclosure that has more hamster
poop in it you can of course remove that but if you see three poops in the entire
enclosure it's not a big deal and it doesn't mean your hamsters enclosure is
dirty since poop is so lightweight it tends to
actually fall to the bottom of the enclosure so what I find helpful is just
taking a dustpan and scooping the bedding from the bottom and this makes
the poop fall to the bottom and then you can quickly sweep up any large amounts
of poop and you can get rid of that if you are someone who has a hamster that
tends to kind of just pee all over the bedding you can just remove the first
top layer of the bedding and then add more new bedding in for my hamster
bumble there's really only two places in her enclosure that I tend to clean out
and that would be her nest/burrows and sand bath because those are the
places she chooses to pee in so since she does choose to pee in her nest/
burrows I wait until she is fully awake out of her nest and then I kind
of carefully go in there and try to get out any of the pee I do this every
couple days or once a week because it is her nest and burrows I really don't want
to destroy those too much but of course you don't want your hamster to be
sleeping and laying in their own pee. Keep in mind all of this can be
disregarded if your hamster has anything like parasites, mites, fleas,
ringworm anything like that because you really want to have a clean enclosure
while treating them for those parasites and fungal infections because it can
very easily reinfect your hamster if the enclosure isn't a 100%
cleaning so I really hope this has been able to answer everyone's question about
how you should clean your hamsters cage and how often you should do it because
it is a little bit confusing to try and explain to someone and it's not as easy
as just cleaning it out once a week so yeah guys I hope you have enjoyed bye
Did you want to be in the video? Say hi Sadie! Say hi guys I'm big. oh where are
Going! You're too big to do this, excuse me. UGH YOU'RE BUTT IS IN MY FACE
Sadie what are you doing