Hamsters are furry little creatures, so they don’t always appreciate high temperatures. Hamsters can overheat very quickly, so if you want your pet to live a long life, it’s important to keep them warm, but not too warm.
Hamsters are popular pets to have. Their intelligence and ability to interact with you make them very interesting housemates. But there is one question I often get about hamsters; How do I keep my hamster warm?
The easiest way to keep your hamster warm is with an aquarium heater. You can get these at any pet store, and they’re inexpensive — usually less than USD 20 per unit.
They typically have a clip that allows you to attach them to the side of your tank or enclosure so they don’t fall into the water when your pet climbs on top of them or moves around in their cage/tank.
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The Best Proven Ways To Keep Your Hamster Warm
There are several ways that you can help your hamster stay warm:
1. Improve the diet
If you want to keep your hamster warm, the first thing you should do is improve its diet. A healthy diet will help your hamster stay warm and cozy year-round.
One of the best ways to ensure that your hamster’s diet is up to snuff is by ensuring enough protein. Hamsters are omnivorous, which means they eat both plant and animal products.
They can get their necessary proteins from various sources, including insects and worms. You can also give them some meat (chicken or turkey) or eggs if they need more protein than they are getting from other foods.
It’s also important to give your hamster a variety of different types of fruits and vegetables, and grains to ensure that they’re getting all their essential vitamins and minerals from food rather than supplements like multivitamins or calcium tablets which tend not to be as effective for helping your pet stay healthy over time since they don’t contain much else besides those two things.
2. Don’t open doors all the time
To keep your hamster warm, don’t open doors frequently.
Hamsters are quite sensitive to changes in temperature, so they prefer to live in a fairly stable environment. Opening a door will let in cold air, so you should try not to do this very often.
This will keep the house at a consistent temperature and prevent sudden temperature changes that can harm your hamster’s health.
3. Exercise with it
One of the best ways to keep your hamster’s body temperature up is by giving them exercise. You can do this by letting them run around in a wheel or putting them in a playpen.
Make sure your hamster has lots of toys and things to climb on and explore in or on top of their cage so they don’t get bored with just one thing all day long.
A wheel might seem like an obvious choice, but it doesn’t give the same type of exercise as a tunnel because hamsters love being able to run from place to place.
4. Locate a perfect spot for the cage
Another thing to do is locate a perfect spot for your hamster cage. The temperature inside the cage should be between 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit, so it’s important to ensure the temperature in your home stays around this range.
You can do this by keeping your hamster cage near a heating vent or putting it in an area where heat naturally rises; if you live in a warm climate, you’ll also want to make sure that there’s plenty of fresh air circulating the cage so that your hamster doesn’t overheat.
If your house gets too cold at night, you may consider setting up an additional heating pad underneath your hamster’s cage so it doesn’t get too cold overnight.
This will help keep the temperature even throughout the day and night so that your hamster doesn’t have any issues with its internal body temperature.
5. Provide extra bedding
You want to ensure that your hamster has enough bedding in its cage. The bedding should be deep enough so your pet can burrow into it but not so much that they can get buried.
You also want to ensure no gaps or holes where cold air could get in.
6. Use a space heater
A space heater is one way to keep your hamster warm if you live in a cold climate. The best type of space heater for small animals is one with a ceramic element rather than an electrical coil because these types generate less heat than other types of space heaters.
Place the heater on the floor of the cage and point it toward where your hamster usually sleeps so he can enjoy the warmth while he sleeps without being burned by the heater.
The more powerful your space heater is, the more expensive it will be but also more efficient at warming up an area quickly without blowing out hot air too fast.
7. Block all forms of ventilation
Block all forms of ventilation. Hamsters need heat, so they don’t provide any ventilation for their cages other than what is necessary for air circulation.
This means that you should cover any holes or gaps in the cage bars with some material so the hamster cannot climb through them.
Conclusion
Pet owners will know that their pets need heat to get through winter, and if your hamster is no different, you’ll want to provide him with the best home he can get. That’s why we’ve put together this list of tips to help your pet stay warm this season.
You can select a hamster that is more adapted to the cold these days. The Chinese hamster and Roborovski hamster come from harsher climates than the Syrian hamster, so they’ll do fine in a cage with less bedding and more space.
However, whichever hamster you select, it’s best to keep an eye on them when things get cold outside and make sure that they have enough bedding.