ADHD - Active Dancing Hamster Disorder

Mummy Hamster might be suffering a bit from post-natal hammy depression, either that or she is bored of the kids and wants to go back to her single life. The babies are getting bigger now but their eyes are still closed so they are still very dependant on the parents. Russian hamsters are great, Daddy Hamster helps out by sitting on the nest to keep them warm and he makes sure that there is plenty of bedding heaped on top of the nest.

The other four hamsters are very respectful of the new parents and they sleep in the top compartment. The parents sleep under the green wheel.  Anyhoo, I was watching the hamsters go about their business and Mummy emerged from a heap of shredded kitchen roll with Brown Baby in her mouth, she darted around the cage, jumped onto the wheel, tried to run on the wheel with BB still in her mouth, tripped over BB and fell off the wheel, grabbed BB again and darted around the cage a bit more, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, she kept dropping poor BB and grabbing him by his limb and dancing round the cage floor again. Daddy came out and tried to take BB off her but she wasn’t having any of it. She jumped back onto the wheel, tripped over Brown Baby again and both went tumbling off, she jumped up, grabbed BB and got on the wheel again. It was most strange, this went on for a long time so I grabbed my camera and managed to get this snap.

Eventually Mummy tired herself out and went back to the nest with Brown Baby, much to everyone’s relief. She hasn’t done it since so I suppose she has worked whatever it was out of her system.  I don’t think it was because I was watching the cage because I’m always in there feeding them, clipping teeth, changing the water etc etc. I haven’t poked around the nest at all since this display just in case so I probably won’t know how Black baby and brown baby are doing until the emerge bright eyed blinking at the new world.