Cleaning Your Hamster’s Cage: Frequency, Facts, and Frequently Asked Questions

Cleaning your hamster’s bedding regularly will be one of the key components to keeping them healthy and happy. Though it may seem minor, dirty bedding can wreak havoc in both your home and cause serious health concerns for your furry pal.

Are You New to Hamster Owning? Are You Wondering When it Is Appropriate to Change Their Bedding in their Cage? Read up on how to keep their living environment neat while learning how a clean cage improves overall quality of life!

Change Your Bedding Daily

Shortly after arriving home with your hamsters, you will quickly realize they poop and pee a lot! Particularly young ones’ digestive systems work at an incredible speed, leaving the cage quickly filthy with droppings. If there are multiple hamsters living together in one cage, things could quickly become unsanitary.

Take care to remove any soiled pieces to extend the life of the bedding and prevent your hamster from roaming around in its own waste. This way you won’t risk an illness from breathing in its fumes.

Weekly Bedding Replacement in Hamster Habits by Martin Javorek of Pixabay
Image Credit: Martin Javorek/Pixabay Every week, or more frequently if there are multiple hamsters, make sure you change out their bedding completely and clean out their cage thoroughly. When multiple hamsters share one cage, this may require twice weekly changes and increased maintenance to keep it looking its best!

How to Change Hamster Bedding
Depending on your cage setup, changing out bedding might vary slightly. Some cages feature pull-out trays where you simply remove and dump out their contents while other require disassembling top parts before discarding lower half.