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Hamster habitat ideas and what they need in their cage

Create the best environment for your hamster

Hamsters are known for sleeping lots – but when they’re awake, they want to be busy exploring, foraging and digging. Creating the best environment for your hamster will help them feel right at home.

You may find your hamster constantly munching away at the bars of their enclosure, or even trying to escape! This is a sure-fire way of telling that your little friend is bored of their home. Their environment may be a bit lacklustre and may need more space or activities to keep them entertained.

Providing your hamster with plenty of toys and activities and swapping these round, will help keep them fit, happy and healthy. Remember, this doesn’t need to cost the earth, there are lots of cost-effective recourses out there to keep your hamster busy and distracted so they don’t attempt to break free.

Your hamster will enjoy:

  • Plastic or card tunnels and tubes for running through
  • Cardboard boxes such as shoe and cereal boxes. See our inspirational article on how to make your own hamster hotel.
  • Dig box or tray filled with coco coir or coco fibre* (coconut husk fibres)
  • Plastic or wooden houses and hides
  • Multi-chamber hide – this can be buried beneath the bedding for them to sleep, hide and store food in.
  • Sand bath – use a shallow litter tray or plastic take away tub filled with hamster safe sand*
  • Wheel – some cages come with a wheel, however they are not always large enough for your pet. They should have a wheel that allows them to fully stretch out and run with a straight back. Syrian and Chinese hamsters will need a 12” solid upright wheel. Other hamsters will need an 8” solid upright wheel.
A hamster enclosure filled with natural elements like dried grass, twigs, wood hides, a sand bath, food dishes, a glass jar of mealworms, a large exercise wheel, and a ceramic mushroom-shaped house to make your hamster feel at home.

A hamster enclosure filled with natural elements like hay, seed sprays, wood hides, a sand bath, a water dish, a glass jar with hemp in, a large exercise wheel, and a ceramic mushroom-shaped house to make your hamster feel at home.

A wooden hamster enclosure filled with natural items like dried plants, wooden tunnels, a running wheel, a ceramic food dish, a mushroom-shaped hide, hanging chews, and various textures for your hamster’s enrichment.

A wooden hamster enclosure filled with natural items like seed sprays, wooden tunnels, a running wheel, a ceramic dish filled with hamster-safe sand, a mushroom-shaped hide, hanging chew toy, and various textures for your hamster’s enrichment.

Hamster exercise balls

We don’t recommend exercise balls for small pets. They can often feel disorientated after use, there’s no access to drinking water, and their little toes/feet can get stuck in the ventilation slits. You can however use them as a hiding space in the cage by removing the lid and filling with soft tissue bedding for them to use.

 

Bedding materials

It’s important to use the correct bedding for your hamster, otherwise it could have a negative effect on their health.

Wood shavings or sawdust can be extremely harmful to a hamster’s skin and airway, and it can give us humans an allergic reaction too!

Hamsters in the wild spend a lot of time underground digging burrows. With our pet hamsters, it’s also important for them to be able to display this natural behaviour. To do this, they should have a minimum of six inches of bedding placed throughout the majority of their enclosure.

They should also have a deeper digging space of at least 10 to 12 inches (25 to 30cms), to enable them to create larger burrows and nests.

Base of cage options

Nesting/digging space

Use a couple of the options mixed together for absorbency and stability.

  • Soft paper bedding e.g. CareFresh, Kaytee Clean & Cozy, Fitch, Small Pet Select.
  • Aspen, such as ProRep Aspen Bedding
  • Good quality hay such as Excel Feeding Hay
  • Hemp bedding such as Aubiose (non-fragranced).
  • Cardboard squares around 1cm square e.g. Ecobale.
  • Shredded card material e.g. Ecobale, Pillow Wad Eco-Nest, Greenmile.

Options that hold burrows well:

  • Soft paper bedding e.g. CareFresh, Kaytee Clean & Cozy, Fitch, Small Pet Select.
  • White, soft tissue paper bedding such as tea bag bedding* – great for creating deeper digging areas, as well as placing inside hiding spaces.

 
*Avoid cotton wool types of bedding and ‘seed pod’ bedding as this can be very dangerous for your pets. It can cause pouch prolapses, intestinal blockages and can get tightly wound around their body and legs.

Cleaning

Keeping your hamster cage clean is key to preventing serious health conditions such as respiratory problems.

Daily – spot clean

  1. Remove any wet areas in their sand bath if they use it as a toilet area.
  2. Replace dirty sand.
  3. Remove any fresh food (e.g. veg) they haven’t eaten from the previous day.
  4. Change their water.

Every two to three weeks – refresh clean

  1. Place your hamster in a secure plastic carrier with plenty of bedding from their cage. Move the carrier to a safe, quiet space away from where you’re cleaning.
  2. Remove any soiled toys or enrichment. Clean any bowls, bottles and the wheel, cleaning them with a pet-friendly disinfectant. Leave in any used, clean toys or enrichment.
  3. Check any burrows they have, removing any soiled bedding and old food. Clean out and replace their sand bath, especially if they use it as a toilet.
  4. Top up any bedding, replace any seed sprays and place any new/ cleaned toys back in*.

*Place any large and heavy toys into the cage first, before the bedding. This will help to prevent them moving or falling and potentially harming your hamster, if placed on top.

Keep as much of their clean used bedding as you can in their enclosure – this will help to minimise stress when placing your hamster back in.

Affiliate links

If a link has an * by it, that means it is an affiliate link. By using these links, it might result in a small payment to Woodgreen as the retailer will be able to see that woodgreen.org.uk was the referring website. This helps keep our pet advice available to everyone, and our support services available for those who need them most.

Any products or services we recommend always remains independently chosen by our pet experts. When we link out to a recommended product, for example a type of harness or feeder, we are recommending the individual product, not any particular retailer. Read our affiliates FAQ for more details

Neither Woodgreen, or the affiliate networks we use collect any personal data through these links.

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