Originally Posted by TwoHammies

Thanks for the kind and friendly advice, much appreciated.

What happened was, I only saw your emails this evening, and this afternoon I had already taken them back to the shop - BUT we now have a lovely Syrian Hamster instead, same as we had before we had the two fighting Chinese dwarf hamsters.

The problem was, the one Chinese dwarf was attacking the other one very aggressively, quite a few times, it was getting to be every few minutes, so once they were separated into two cages, they were a lot happier. At least the little one was. He stopped squealing and leaping out of the way, he must have been very stressed out.

I think the shop will re-home them, it was a big chain "Pets At Home" and they have masses of different rodents, hamsters, Chinchillas, rabbits, guinea pigs and so on. They were very understanding about it.

I've just spent over an hour cleaning our four-part Rotastack cage, I scrubbed it down in the bath tub using detergent, then rinsed it very well and dried it all by hand.

As usual I'm giving the new Syrian 24 hours to settle down now that he is our of his cardboard box and in the sparkling new cage, but he has been running on his wheel madly for fifteen minutes already, I thought he'd be cowering in his cage at first, but he is already getting in a good run.

Anyway I look forward to getting to know him (handling) tomorrow, after he has had his 24-hour settling-in.

Thanks again, I'm sure the two Chinese dwarves will be in someone else's home before long. Our last Syrian Hamster lived for nearly two years and was sorely missed, so we thought we'd try the two Chinese dwarves, but now we have a Syrian again, we are all much happier.