A collection of hamster cage accessories
forms a vital part of the chain of well being and happiness, for your pet hamster. It does not matter whether it is a dwarf, Russian or any other species, they all benefit enormously from the addition of one or two well chosen items. It also does not matter whether you have a large or a small hamster cage.
A typical shopping list of the available hamster cage accessories would be as follows:
hamster exercise wheels
hamster tunnels
A hamster maze
Hamster Houses & Homes
Wooden block
Gnaw sticks or posts
Hamster plastic play boots
Hamster see saws
So where is the best place to start? If you had limited money, what are the best cage add-ons to buy? Should you buy a branded item such as the well known Rotastack or Crittertrail accessories, or improvise. Well I hope to be able to answer some of these questions for you. I will start by going through the range of accessories and then later on I will give you some great ideas on how to make your own DIY hamster toys.
As an aside, whilst I said hamster cage size was unimportant in terms of having accessories, it obviously makes a difference as to the amount and size of hamster toys or accessories you can fit inside.
Hamster Wheels:
To be accurate, these are better known as pet hamster exercise wheels. The hamster exercise wheels
title is self explanatory really. In the wild a hamster will walk, run and roam some considerable distance in search of food, several km in fact! In his cage he is restricted, so we need to make up for that and provide suitable exercise opportunities. Believe you me if you have ever seen a hamster in a wheel, you can scarcely believe how fast and for how long they run. It can be annoying though especially at night, which is why you can now get silent hamster wheels.
Always buy a solid wheel to prevent trapped legs.
Hamster Tunnels:
hamster tunnels
Hamsters in the wild live underground in tunnels. They love going through them, around them and seemingly trying to get past each other in them. The addition of a tunnel or a tube will provide plenty of variety and exploring opportunity. In fact, you will probably find it will be used quite often as a sleeping quarters as well.
You can buy tubes and tube networks from Crittertrail or similar or make your own inexpensively
Now this is not so much an accessories as a necessity. Your pet hamster will use this for ‘nesting’ in. That is to say most of the time when he sleeps he will bury himself in its contents, usually secondary soft bedding. There are so many styles and types around, but the critical thing is to ensure it is either open topped or has a removable top.
A Hamster Maze:
These are great fun for hamster and owner alike. As with hamster houses, hamster maze 
there are a great variety for sale. Again ensure they are open topped or have a removable top. One thing you will discover about hamsters is they have an amazing ability to squeeze into tight spaces, almost flattening themselves, but you must have a way of releasing them if they are stuck.
Wooden Blocks, Gnaw Sticks and Posts:
Hamsters are rodents and therefore like all rodents, such as rats and rabbits, their teeth never stop growing. In the wild this is no problem as they have plenty of natural opportunities to wear them down. As a pet however, unless you provide the items to allow this to happen, the results can be quite horrific and often fatal, with it known for teeth to grow through the upper jaws and skull.
Simple wooden blocks and gnawing post provide more than enough to sort out most teeth. If you intend to provide your own how made items, be very careful what you use. This will be covered in a later post.
Other Hamster Cage Accessories
This just leaves see-saw, hamster boots and even hamster cars. All have their place and provide hours of exercise and entertainment. It all depends on the size of your cage and if you also have a safe external play area to bond with little harry hamster outside the cage environment
So there is a brief introduction to the world of hamster cage accessories and their uses. The best thing now is to start checking out the variety and prices of what is around. I have added a few helpful pages to guide you and give you the best deals.
