Hamsters killing 2 week old babies?!?

Question

I bought two "male" dwarf hamsters and they surprised me with a litter (which they ate). I separated them, but not soon enough because the female had another litter two weeks ago. They were starting to run around, eat on their own, and just started drinking on their own yesterday morning. However, last night I found two half eaten, and this morning another is dead. I do not know why she is now killing them? I think they are still too young to separate from the mother (just under 2 weeks old). Any advice would be appreciated.

Answer 1

well i dont know about dwarf hamsters but when a mother rabbit has babies and something else is trying to get to the babies and kill them the mother rabbit will kill the babies

hope this helps and you could also research it

Answer 2

Have you at all disturbed the nest? This is a huge mistake that a lot of people make when their hamster first has babies. It is also common for hamsters under 4 months old with babies to cull (kill) some of the babies to reduce the litter size. They will also cull the weakest pups in the litter as well.

http://www.hamsterific.com/RaisingPups.c... - I suggest going there are reading about raising hamsters.  There is also http://www.hamsterific.com/orphans.cfm which talks about orphaned pups.

Good Luck.

Answer 3

Well, either you touched the babies and the mother smells the human on the baby or the babies are sick. The mother will know if the babies are sick and will kill them.

Answer 4

This scenario happens all too often with hamsters bought from pet shops. The hamsters are wrongly sexed and male and female are mixed together.The first litter is always the weakest litter since the parents themselves are very young, so the parents kill them. Since they were not separated soon enough, they mated again and had another litter in another 18 days.

The hard fact is that this litter would also be very weak since the mother hardly had time to recover from her first. Most probably the weak ones died and she ate them to preserve her energy.

You cannot separate them at this stage since they are still dependent on their mother's milk. But here are a few things you can do to try and save the rest -

DO not touch the babies since that would cause the mother to eat them.

Give the mother lots of protein food in the form of cheese bits, bits of hard boiled egg and skimmed milk. This will make her healthy enough to take care of her litter.

Give her favourite treats like sunflower seeds twice daily to keep her very happy.

Do not keep the cage near a lot of disturbances. Shift the cage slowly to a semi dark and peaceful area where the mother would not get stressed out.

Leave lots of food on the bedding for the young ones to eat and get healthier. Attach two more water bottles for the young ones to drink. If they are not yet used to using water bottles, keep a dish of water in the cage.

Hold on and take very good care of the mother for another one week. The day third week starts, rush over to the cage and separate the babies from the mother.

Make sure that you put the male and female babies in separate cages since they mate young and you don't want to face the same problem all over again.

Answer 5

Well this can happen to hamster pups. If you touch, hold, or disturb the pups, the pups will get your scent on them. So maybe the mother smelled your scent on her pups and didn't think the pups were hers. Another reason she might have eaten her pups is, she thought her pups were being threatened and so instead of the pups dying another way, she will eat them. I hoped this helped.

Answer 6

u must of touched the pups. if the mother sees the pups suffering she eats them so they wont suffer.

Answer 7

seperate now

Answer 8

this is very common with rodents, but it is mostly the father who will kill the young. you are right they are too young to seperate. i would just watch them as much as you can and as soon as they turn 4-5 weeks start to seperate

hope this helps!!

Answer 9

separate them now