Meet Turd Ferguson

A few weeks ago, I adopted a baby winter white dwarf hamster (also known as a Siberian or Djungarian hamster). A male hamster had accidentally gotten sent in with a group of females, so naturally babies happened. Since the hamster was free and I already a cage from a previous hamster, I decided to take one home. I selected the one whose coloring I liked best and hoped for a female (they are a little less smelly than the males if you ask me), but it was young enough that it was hard to say for sure what the gender was.

"Hi!"

Of course, I ended up with a male and one whose disposition was a little less than friendly. Every time I try to handle him, he bites. Since he's only about 6 weeks old, his teeth haven't broken the skin yet, but soon he'll be able to draw blood if he wants. I'm trying to work on handling him without him biting, but he even nibbles on leather gloves when I use those to hold him. He may end up just not being a very cuddly guy, which I can live with (my previous hamster was a major biter - maybe it's me?).

Here's the cage set up I have (I bought this brand specifically because you can connect multiple cages and recently added the second red bottomed cage).

Due to his somewhat unfriendly disposition I ended up naming him Turd Ferguson. This name makes me laugh every time I hear it (it comes from a Saturday Night Live sketch in the late 90s or early 2000s which you can find on Hulu if you so desire). The hamster is also a bit of a poop factory, so the name seems fitting all around. Besides, I figure I can shorten it to Gus when necessary. But for now I'm really chuckling every time I use his full name.

I've gone through 3 different wheels trying to find one that is quiet. The one that came with the cage, I knew was noisy from previous experience, but I tried it out for a while to see if I could live with the noise. If you've never had a hamster, here's where it's important to realize that hamsters are nocturnal and tend to run on their wheels at night a lot. The second wheel I tried claimed to be a silent wheel. It
was louder than the first, actually waking me up several times a night.

I like to run at all hours of the night!

The third wheel has so far been pretty quiet. Initially when I put it in the cage, it was squeaky. I removed it and greased it up with vegetable oil (because that's safe for pets) and put it back in place. He instantly climbed on and spent a good 20 minutes licking the oil off the wheel, then ran around quietly. With any luck, it will remain quiet enough to not wake me up every night.

Mmmm! Delicious vegetable oil!

For now, I'm going to keep working on getting him to not bite when I handle him. The leather gloves are helping with me not jumping when he bites because that probably just makes him more nervous and likely to bite. Even if he doesn't end up being very friendly, he'll have a good life with me. I've already bought three different kinds of treats and vegetables just for him. He seemed to really enjoy the pumpkin meat and roasted seeds I gave him. He's really pretty spoiled, so it would be nice if he would sweeten up his personality a little.