A dwarf hamster on paper bedding outside a wooden house with pine cones on either side

What living with a hamster is like

Asleep by day, busy after dark

A hamster sleeps through your day in a nest it built itself and wakes around dusk. From then until morning it digs, rearranges its hoard, sand bathes and runs, often three to five miles a night on the wheel. Your part is small and regular: scatter food and refresh water each evening, lift out the wet corner of bedding every few days, and spend ten minutes letting the animal climb over your hands. Most of the enjoyment is watching, and in building and rebuilding the habitat with new tunnels, textures and places to dig.

Which animal should you start with?

Syrian hamsterThe largest and the easiest to hold, about 6 inches long and slow enough for careful hands. Strictly solitary: two adults in one enclosure will fight, so plan on one. Lives 2 to 3 years.

Start here

Visit a rescue or shelter in the evening, when hamsters are awake, and ask to handle one. Plan on a single animal in its own enclosure, with a wheel at least 11 inches across.

Petfinder

Dwarf hamsterRoborovski, winter white, Campbell's and Chinese hamsters are half the size and much quicker, so they suit people who would rather watch than cuddle. Prone to diabetes, which shapes the food you buy. Keep one per enclosure. Lives 1.5 to 3 years.

Start here

Decide which dwarf you want before you shop: Roborovskis are fast and best watched, while winter whites and Campbell's are easier to hold. Then buy or adopt one, not a pair.

RSPCA: hamster care

Gerbil keepingGerbils are awake in bursts through the day, almost never bite and are happiest in a same-sex pair. They dig deeper and chew harder than hamsters, so everything in the enclosure has to be glass, metal, wood or ceramic. Lives 3 to 4 years.

Start here

Check that gerbils are legal where you live (California and Hawaii ban them), then look for two littermates of the same sex that already live together.

American Gerbil Society

Fancy miceFancy mice are domesticated pet mice bred in dozens of coat colors. Females live happily in groups of two to four and climb more than they dig. Males have a strong musky smell and usually have to live alone. Lives 1.5 to 2.5 years.

Start here

Look for a group of two to four females from a rescue or a hobby breeder, and read one vet-written care sheet before you bring them home.

PetMD: mouse care sheet

Open a card for the first thing to do. Its button puts that animal's food and wheel in the kit and takes the others' out. Everything else on the list suits all four.

A white and brown pet mouse eating a piece of food — A fancy mouse

How to get started

Tick each one off as you go

Finding an animal and a vet

Choosing and setting up the enclosure

Floor space comes first.

Aim for about 775 square inches of unbroken floor (roughly 40 by 20 inches) and never go under 450. Levels and tubes do not count toward it.

Pick solid sides.

A glass tank or a wooden enclosure with a mesh lid holds deep bedding and stops kicked-out mess. Wire cages suit only shallow bedding, and mice and dwarf hamsters slip through bars wider than a quarter inch.

Check the base depth before buying.

You need room for 6 inches of bedding for hamsters and mice and 8 to 10 inches for gerbils, with space above it for the wheel.

Size the wheel to the animal.

Its back should stay flat while it runs. A wheel that is too small bends the spine every night for hours.

Use a solid running surface.

Wire and mesh wheels trap feet and tails.

Give the hideout more than one room if you can.

Hamsters keep a bedroom, a pantry and a toilet corner, and a multi-chamber hide lets them do that.

Set the sand bath in a heavy glass or ceramic dish from your kitchen so it does not tip.

Most hamsters also choose it as their toilet, which makes spot cleaning quick.

A grey dwarf hamster standing upright on wood-chip bedding inside a wooden enclosure — Solid sides, loose bedding

What they eat

Feed a seed and pellet mix made for the species: about 1 to 2 tablespoons a day for a Syrian, 1 tablespoon for a dwarf hamster or a gerbil, and 1 to 2 teaspoons per mouse.
Scatter it across the bedding instead of filling a bowl. Searching for food is most of what these animals do in the wild, and it fills hours of their night.
Add a thumbnail-sized piece of fresh vegetable a few times a week: broccoli, cucumber, carrot or leafy greens.
Skip fruit and anything sugary for dwarf hamsters, and keep it to a rare treat for the others.
Never feed citrus, onion, garlic, raw beans, chocolate or sticky foods that can lodge in cheek pouches.
Change the water daily and check the bottle is flowing by tapping the ball with a finger.

A white hamster sitting up beside a scatter of seed mix and dried flowers — Seed mix, scattered

A small brown and white hamster on a grey sofa cushion with an armchair blurred behind

Handling and taming

Low, slow and on their terms

Never wake a sleeping hamster to hold it.

A startled hamster bites, and broken sleep makes it ill over time.

Scoop with two cupped hands from below.

A hand coming down from above looks like a bird of prey.

Sit on the floor or hold the animal over a bed.

A fall from standing height can break a leg or worse.

Never lift a gerbil or a mouse by the tail.

A gerbil's tail skin can tear away and does not grow back.

Keep sessions to ten or fifteen minutes and end them before the animal starts struggling.

Use a dry bathtub or a playpen with hides in it for time outside the enclosure. Skip exercise balls

The animal cannot see, smell or stop, and toes catch in the air slits.

Health, vets and the law

Weigh the animal once a week and write it down. Steady weight loss is usually the first sign of illness, days before anything else shows.
Treat diarrhea or a wet, dirty tail area as an emergency, above all in a young hamster. The illness called wet tail can kill within two days.
Watch for overgrown teeth, clicking or wheezing breaths, bald patches, lumps and a hamster that is cold and limp. All of them need a vet. A room under 60°F can send a hamster into a dangerous torpor.
Expect $60 to $100 for an exam with a vet who sees small rodents, and keep a small emergency fund. Treatment often costs more than the animal did.
Wash your hands after handling the animal or its bedding. Rodents can carry salmonella and, rarely, a virus (LCMV) that is a risk in pregnancy, so pregnant people should leave cage cleaning to someone else.
Check local rules. Hawaii bans hamsters and gerbils as pets, California bans gerbils, and some landlords count caged pets in the lease.

Vet-written reference

Merck Veterinary Manual: hamsters Free vet-written reference on hamster housing, diet and illness

What trips beginners up

Expect a pet that is awake when you are not. A hamster's busy hours start around your bedtime, and a wheel in the bedroom will keep you up.
Expect shyness for the first few weeks, and some animals, Roborovskis above all, never enjoy being held.
Expect a short life. Two to three years goes quickly, which matters most when the pet is for a child.
Drop the pet store starter cage. Most are a fraction of the floor space a hamster needs, and bar chewing and climbing the walls are signs of an enclosure that is too small.
Drop the idea of a pair of hamsters. Even dwarf hamsters sold together often fight once they mature, and the injuries are serious.
Drop cotton-wool nesting fluff, scented bedding and cedar shavings. Fluff tangles around legs and blocks the gut, and strong scents irritate small lungs.
Drop the full clean-out. Replacing all the bedding at once wipes out the animal's scent map and stresses it. Spot clean, and swap a third at a time.

A hamster looking out of a cardboard tube on a wooden shelf — Looking out of a tube

Where to learn more

Pet store care sheets for hamsters are often years behind on cage size, so start with vet-written and club material. The Merck Veterinary Manual has free plain-language pages on hamsters, gerbils and mice. Species clubs publish care guides, keep breeder lists and run shows where you can meet keepers and see well-kept animals in person. For anything about a sick animal, your own vet beats any forum.

Clubs and free care guides

A white gerbil perched on a branch in warm light — A gerbil on a branch

Why the kit looks like this

The enclosure is the biggest single cost and the one place not to save, because a large solid-sided one prevents most of the behavior problems beginners run into. Bedding is the main running cost: filling a big enclosure 6 inches deep takes more bags than you expect, so the first fill costs the most and top-ups are cheap. The wheel and the food change with the animal, so pick your species at the top of the kit and those two lines swap to match. The carrier and scale are small extras that make vet visits and weekly health checks simple.

A grey hamster eating inside a cork-bark hideout on bedding — Eating inside a cork hide

Build the habitat

Compare the options on each line, then set your tiers and check out from the cart. Clicking a card selects it there. The first line, the animal, is not something you buy online: it comes from a rescue, a shelter or a breeder. The food and the wheel join the kit once you pick Syrian hamster, Dwarf hamster, Gerbil keeping or Fancy mice.

Your hamster, gerbils or mice

essential · The animals

Everything else in the kit is built around the animal you choose, and where it comes from decides how healthy and how tame it starts out.

Not sold on Amazon · rescue, shelter or breeder

Not sold on Amazon. Look for a small-animal rescue, a shelter or a hobby breeder who handles the young daily, and ask the animal's age, sex and current food. Expect a $10 to $30 adoption fee, or $20 to $60 from a breeder. One hamster, a same-sex pair of gerbils, or two to four female mice.

Large solid-sided enclosure

essential · Housing

Floor space and bedding depth decide whether the animal can dig, run and forage the way it needs to. A solid-sided enclosure gives both and keeps the bedding inside.

budget

Prolee Hamster Cage Chewproof Wooden 40 Inch Guinea Pig Cages Mice and Rat Habitat Openable Top with Acrylic Sheets Solid Built

4.4(411)

$159.99

Hamster Keeping

What living with a hamster is like

Which animal should you start with?

How to get started

Choosing and setting up the enclosure

What they eat

Handling and taming

Health, vets and the law

What trips beginners up

Where to learn more

Why the kit looks like this

Build the habitat

Your hamster, gerbils or mice

Large solid-sided enclosure

Unscented paper bedding

Multi-chamber wooden hideout

Water bottle

Bathing sand

Wooden chew toys

Small travel carrier

Syrian hamster food mix

11 to 12-inch silent wheel

Dwarf hamster food mix

8 to 10-inch silent wheel

Gerbil food mix

Chew-proof gerbil wheel

Mouse food

Upright mouse wheel

Digital kitchen scale