How do pet stores keep a group of SYRIAN hamsters in one cage?

Question

I went to the mall to get my gerbils a couple of weeks ago and saw the hamsters in the tank. there were like ten of them all together. If Syrians cannot be kept in groups, how do they do it there?

Answer 1

The first answer pretty much has it. I work at a pet store (one of the two big chains) and unfortunately, due to lack of space and the large number of animals we receive we do sometimes have to keep multiple syrians together. I wouldn't say this if Y!A wasn't basically anonymous, but we have had problems with cannibalism among hamsters. and our headquarters really doesn't give a sh*t. It's sad, but it's life I guess.  

Answer 2

well normally the hamsters are young and not wanting to fight for their home, which is why sryians fight. but some pet stores like petsmart, keep them like that no matter how old they get. the hamsters do fight often and sometimes kill one another, but you dont see that. they take out the dead hamsters. and sometimes they just dont fight because thats the way they have lived all their life, they dont think they can fight and make the cage their own.

my local pet store separates sryian hamsters when they get a certain age and lower their price.

Answer 3

Because they're babies.

I find where I work, in a pet shop, that we rarely have problems.

We have four tanks for Syrians on the shop floor, and a shipment of twenty a week at about six weeks old.

If they can, they go out on Wednesday, four per tank- we DON'T mix 'old' and 'new' batches- and we normally have one or two per tank by the end of that weekend. (We normally have two or three cages of Syrians out back, and these are cleaned out, like the rest of the animals, daily, so we also know of any fighting within groups out there and react the same as on the shop floor.)

We rarely have problems with fighting and, if we do, we split up the cages and put one out back and keep one on the shop floor, for example- I've never known of deaths resulting from this fighting whilst in our shop, or fights occuring in a group bigger than two because it's rare to have a group bigger than two by the time that 'batch' reaches puberty and starts getting territoral.

But yes, that's why. Too young, and they're split up if they do fight. There's no magic, as there is no way to stop fighting.

And as for guinea pigs, as someone meantioned, I've NEVER seen our guinea pigs fighting. I've seen in a group of three female rabbits one of them hitting puberty early and fighting the other two- they were fine, we saw and heard this and split them up- but no other fighting situations apart from this.

***

Oh, and I've been working there sell and cleaning out animals there for two years and I've never had to clean up after ANY fights. No blood on our cages, because we have a high sell rate and our cages empty quickly.

The most deaths we get from Syrians there is wet tail, in hot summers, and most of them are customer returns rather than the shop floor, and we still have a 95% rate in curing them.

Answer 4

They are infants i asked them that when i got my 3 hammie and thats what they said! Dont say not to keep them is different cages because they are in seperate cages!

Answer 5

they are stil too young.  they need to be separated before they mature or they will fight.

Answer 6

Hamsters, guinea pigs or any rodents for that matter would mature only in about 6 weeks but they are weaned as early as 3 weeks and are put in the same cages. Hamsters and guinea pigs start showing their solitary or territorial tendencies only when they become adults which could be anytime between 2 - 4 months. That is why you can actually see syrians too getting along very well in the same cage since they are still young ones.

Pet shops run large overheads by having those glass cages with facilities for the animals on display, so they try to cut costs by putting all animals in the same cage, taking into the probability that until they turn older, the hamsters or guinea pigs won't fight.

There are cases of vicious fighting since some hamsters mature faster than the others but what you see is only the cleaned up cages with the happy animals, the signs of any hamster in the gang killed viciously over the night in the pet shop is successfully wiped off by the pet shop workers.

Sad but this is the actual scenario of what happens at pet shops in the process of cutting costs and saving money for the shop!

Answer 7

if they grow up as babies to adults then they will be fine. if you put two adults together they will fight because one of them will want to be the leader. but if they are two babies they will be fine.

Answer 8

sprinkle baby powder on them...they cant smell boys or girls

EDIT yes it is true they can be together as babies, but at a certain age they will start to fight. thats where the powder comes in

Answer 9

Basically because they're babies.  Although they are several litters grouped together, the hamsters have never been alone yet so they treat everybody like littermates.

When I worked in a pet store, we did often have problems if hamsters had been there for several weeks and we got a new shipment in.  The two groups would have to be kept separate.