Hamster help for broken bones

Here is our hamster, who is known as Pot Noodle, (named after the UK snack food, due to his tendency to eat and eat and eat!), or Noodle for short. He is a year old now and is a very curious and energetic long haired syrian with plenty of character as can be seen from the picture. Noodle has a multi-level cage and recently had a fall during the night. Unfortunately, because of this he managed to break his front left arm and so is feeling sorry for himself at the moment.

We took him to the Vets and they gave us the following advice (just in case anyone else has the same problem):

1. Take away any exercise activities from his cage (i.e. wheels, etc)
2. Take away any extra multi-levels so that his cage is all on one level and try to find a balance between minimising the size of the cage and not making him too bored
3. Make sure he has extra bedding to make him comfortable when sleeping
4.Try adding more calcium to his diet by adding pieces of milk soaked bread and/or pieces of high calcium dog biscuits to his food. This will help his bones heal quicker due to the extra calcium in his diet.

We have done these things and Noodle does not seem to be in any distress or excess pain, however, he can only hobble around at the minute, trying to keep the weight off his front left paw. The Vet said that the break will heal itself in around 6 weeks time, however, depending on how straight the bone heals itself, he may always suffer from a slight limp. During his recovery period we are trying to keep him happy and make up for his lack of exercise and climbing activities by giving him some extra treats and paying him lots of attention.

I hope that this information is useful to anyone in the unfortunate event that their own hamster has a similar accident. It seems that although multi-level style cages (i.e. RotoStak, etc) are fun and entertaining for the hamster to live in, there are some safety issues to consider also.

For anyone concerned about Noodle’s health at the moment, he is not in any real pain, and is quite his normal character. In fact, the main problem is turning down his frequent requests to come out of the cage and play, as it is much better at the moment for him to rest and keep off his leg.

Author: Matt Stevenson

Web Site: http://www.geocities.com/mdstevouk/potnoodle/index.htm

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