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2 of my hamsters died mysteriously. help!

Mr. Darcy & Bam

on july 31st of last year i purchased a baby teddy bear hamster. he was a normal, active hamster, with no health problems that i could tell. but after about four months i found him one morning curled up in the bottom of his cage, seemingly dead. however, after holding him a few minutes, he seemed to revive a little. he was very cold, and was having trouble breathing. i tried to warm him up and give him some water, but he passed away after a few more hours. about 2 weeks later, after thoroughly cleaning his cage, including bleaching it, i purchased another hamster from the same store. only 8 days later, christmas day, the exact thing happened to him as happened to my first hamster. i have no idea what happened and i don't want to get another hamster without knowing what happened and how to prevent it in the future. can you help?

Symptoms: Breathing

•   Derek McCoy says:

  January 06th, 2009 at 10:15 PM

  Its very hard to say exactly what happened.  From your description of events I would surmise that your first hamster passed away from a respiratory infection which is unfortunately very common in hamsters.  An age of 1.5 years beyond whatever time it lived before you got him would make it a geriatric, and very prone to such infections.  The unfortunate death of your second hamster was probably not related to that of your first since as you stated you very thoroughly washed the cage.  Honestly I would estimate that probably 1 out of 5 or so hamsters purchased from even a good pet store will probably die within a few weeks from any one of a number of factors.  I'd guess that this was probably no more than bad luck.  Certainly clean the cage thoroughly again as you've done before and feel safe in purchasing another hamster, hopefully with better results.  ~D

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