We got Beans and Edwina just before Dec but they are really smelly (well acording to hubby )

Anyway does anybody have any tips on toning the smell down a bit.

We clean the cage every week (did it twice last week) to no avail.

I read somwhere that you could put down a thin layer of baking soda on the bottom of the cage after cleaning and then put the bedding on top, but I'm not sure if it would harm the hammy's or not

And yes they are in different cages.
My hubby has made a hammy hotel, it's like a big wooden bookcase and each hammy has two floors but they are seperated and the front of them has perspex doors and loads of air holes in for ventilation.

but I was thinking even though there is enough air could it be trapping the smell even more so and would that upset the hammy's.

Any advice please

IMO Hamsters are better off in cages with wire, so that the air can circulate, when I kept them, I scooped out the woodsgavings in their wee corner every single day, and cleaned out properly once a week, hamsters shouldnt really smell, not like mice anyway.

Mmm yes I was thinking maybe wire is the way to go. that would be better for them.
Mind you we did have them in wire cages to start with when we first got them, they still smelled bad LOL

I do know girls smell more than boys.

The smell is probably sticking to the wood since it cannot be cleaned properly, get a good sized wire cage with a plastic bottom that can be cleaned better.

The shelf and the bottom tray are plastic and the wood surround is that laminated stuff (non porous) like you get in the Ikea bookcases etc

The issue is not the cage as such, but the cage adds to it.
As i said they smelt bad even in wire cages.

just wondering if there was anything any body used for their female hammys that helped.

Sometimes you can train a hamster to use a large jar as a toilet ( I found that 700gr beetroot jars were ideal as jam jars are a bit small for Syrians ). This means that it can be emptied and rinsed out as required .
If the hamsters use a particular spot in the cage then put the jar there with a bit of the urine soaked shavings/sawdust in it to make it smell like their toilet spot.
With luck they will then use the jar which can be rinsed out as frequently as necessary - don't over clean it though or it won't smell enough for the hamster to use it .
Warning - don't put the jar on a shelf or ledge where it could fall off and hurt the hamster .

Thats a novel idea

Lets hope it's not as hard as it was potty training my kids

When I had my hamser she always weed in the same corner, that meant I could just clean out that area if I needed to. Although having said that, I don't remember her smelling all that much.

i have an actual hamster toilet
(this one: http://www.petplanet.co.uk/product.a...451&pf_id=5564 though the review on that site doesn;t really rave about it >_>)

it fits in the corner perfectly, out of my 4 hamsters though, Doris, the latest, is the only one to use it exclusively
while the others did use it, i'd still find that they used another corner of the cage as well, but that wasn't really an issue
while it did come with a special litter, i found that woodshavings do as good a job, so there was no sense buying any more special stuff.

all my hamsters have been female, the first three were in a big wire cage with a plastic base, but Doris is in my old aquarium now, as she would chew the bars on the cage so much that no one in the house was getting any sleep.

none of them have really smelled but you can definitely smell the tinge of wee in the air when doris' toilet needs cleaning
other than that everyone was fine, apart from Matilda - but then that was her, not her cage.
it was like a really strong pungent... overly strong gravy granule smell
it's the only way i can describe it, i know it doesn't make much sense

she was a weird one, i used to have to "bath" her as the smell was just overpowering (i know you're not supposed to, but it was a quick careful dip of her body into a warm bowl of water, then into a towel and dried) and that really helped with the smell
it stopped happening after a while, but it coincided with when her hormones were changing

the loos are quite handy though, as sometimes you can get away with leaving the rest of their bedding alone if it's clean, so it would definitely be worth giving a jar or a covered tray a go

Just found Edwina an hour ago, she's died

The other one is ok and she's gone back into the wire cage.
I'm disinfecting everything just in case Edwina had a disease.

She seamed absolutely fine last nite. I woke her up by accident and she growled at me (a hamster sort of growl, if you know what i mean, like bugger off and leave me alone)

It must have been our fault

Sorry about Edwina. Are you sure she was dead and hadn't hibernated? There's another thread where a poster thought theirs had died but it had hibernated.

Ours is in a metal cage, a male and doesnt smell at all. I clean the cage once a week. Last one was female and she didn't smell at all either.

We pick her up and she was hard just like our other hammy when he died

Was she in a warm room as they go like that in hibernation too? If the room was fairly warm it wasn't hibernation. Strange to die so quickly if she wasn't ill.

sorry to hear about your hamster they are only with us a short time but they make a big impression.

its not the type of cage that's the problem with smelly hamsters (sometimes bared cages are a bad idea if you have bar chewer), its the type of substrate used. if you use wood shaving they are not very absorbent, you are best using a megazorb or carefresh type bedding.

carefresh can be found in most pet shops, pets at home sells it but its quite expensive.

megazorb is a lot harder to find but much cheaper as its usually a horse bedding but it is completely safe for hamsters, you can find it in most equestrian/ farm shops or online(its 85ltr's so postage is quite hefty but it still works out cheaper than shavings and carefresh.
I personally use megazorb I get it for £8 a bag and it lasts ages I do a full clean every month and I spot clean in between, its less stressful for my hamsters as well.

you can train hamsters to use a litter tray or corner and its quite easy, just rub the soiled bedding in the corner or litter tray you would like the hamster to use and eventually it will just use that area, chinchilla sand is a good litter and its good for greasy fur.

It was carefresh.
I'm gonna try the litter tray jar thing with Beans (i hope it's not too late as shes 3 months old now)

Tryied it with Eddie last year but i didn't put soiled bedding in it, just the stuff it came with and he never used it, so i binned it!

Oh i do love hammy's

Ricky checked her and he said she was proper stiff as a board or brown bread as he'd say

its never too late to potty train and 3 months is not that old really.

the stuff they usually give you with the trays is not verry good for hamsters anyway usually.

also it might be because the hamster is in heat that it smells they can give of a really bad pong in heat.

Are you sure it wasn't wet-tail? It would explain the smell and could be what killed her?

No we checked and there was nothing there. She was the outgoing and friendly happy hamster.