I was recently persuaded to adopt 8 Siberian dwarf hamsters, lest they be euthanatized. I was assured that I was getting 4 males, 4 females, in separate habitats. I am a trusting soul.
So I guess I better put up a frickin NATIVITY SET to celebrate the MIRACULOUS VIRGIN BIRTH that has occurred. Somebody call the Pope please, the Hamster Messiah has arrived. Moreover, he has several siblings not anticipated by scripture. When the Three Kings get here they can just IOU me for the extra frankincense.
Call around to local pet shops. Sometimes they will buy/trade for baby hamsters. When I was growing up we used to trade a pet store baby gerbils for gerbil food & cedar chips.
Where are you located? In the greater Washington DC area there is a wonderful rescue called Small Angels (http://www.smallangelsrescue.org/) that deals only with small animals. They deal with situations like this all the time and can give you advice, at the very least. I would offer to take some but it’s a little hard to ship them to Thailand…
I personally would NOT look to sell/donate the babies back to a pet store unless you are absolutely sure that said store is responsible when it comes to small critters…way too many aren’t, and will allow unlimited breeding or simply not treat their hamsters right to begin with.
Also, if you haven’t already, make sure all the hamsters are now in the proper habitats! It can be difficult to sex them sometimes and you really don’t want any further surprises…fortunately, dwarf hamsters do best in family groups, so if you are assiduous about separating the babies by sex before they get old enough to breed, you may be okay with two separate (but large) groups. (You may also want to investigate finding new homes for one sex or the other, and keeping only boys or girls yourself, if you want to make double-plus-sure that no unexpected pregnancies occur in the future.) Apologies if I’m telling you everything you already know, but these are just my first thoughts as a previous hamster owner.
(ETA: I would also recommend that you start playing with the babies as soon as you are SURE that they are old enough that Mom won’t take it amiss and kill them. Are the other hammies used to being handled? Getting them socialized properly from an early age will make them that much more fun to have as pets, and more importantly, it will be easier on the hamsters as they know that you are Giver of Treats and not Big Scary Creature.)
Congrats on your hammies, by the way. Campbell’s are super cute, and with a lot of love and socialization can be absolutely delightful little pets. I adopted a family group-- mom and three daughters-- from the aforementioned Small Angels Rescue and was blown away by how much personality they had and how willing they were to interact with their “human”.
My sister had some male and female hamsters in separate cages… that mated THROUGH the bars of the cages. If they get close enough, apparently they can do that. The hamsters were never out of their cages and never mixed, and a female came up pregnant anyway. If the cages were near each other, maybe that’s what happened.
A similar thing happened to me. I bought 2 adorable male dwarf hamsters. Or at least, the man at the pet shop said they were both male. I realised he was wrong when tiny baby hamsters appeared. I decided to keep them all, and not wanting to make the same mistake twice had a vet divide them up. You have my sympathies!
You too huh? Same thing happened to us a few years ago, except we only had two “males”. They had two littlers before we even noticed. I think we guilted the pet store into taking the pups back in exchange for some food and a new small cage for the real male.
