If you are an owner of a hamster, or you want to take care of one, then you better read this first. Hamsters, though they may not look like it, are very susceptible to diseases and thus get sick frequently. In fact, taking care of a hamster’s health is a hard work. So if you think you’ve got the qualifications, then you’ll need to know how to prevent illnesses from harming your hamster.

            To prevent a hamster from getting sick, there are lots of things that you should do including:

• Healthy Diet – A hamster needs to eat. But you simply just can’t feed it anything. You should formulate a healthy diet for your hamster. A healthy diet for a hamster should include a reliable brand of hamster food, which would give the hamster its nutritional needs and some vegetables that hamsters naturally eat. Also, make sure to have enough water supplies for your hamster to drink. The water should also be changed frequently to make sure that your hamster drinks clean water.
• Beddings and Cage - The hamster’s bedding should be changed regularly. This would prevent any bacteria or any unwanted viruses from being created on the dirty beddings. The cage should also be cleaned regularly to maintain a clean environment for your hamster.
• Ill Hamsters – If you are taking care of more than one hamster and one of them is ill, make sure to isolate that hamster. You can put it on a different cage. This prevents the illness from spreading and infecting your other hamsters.
• Outside – If you want to let your hamster out of its cage every once in a while, make sure to keep an eye on it. The hamster may get injured while it is running outside. Make sure to prevent it from getting close to a dangerous object.
• Stress – Hamsters can get stressed especially from fighting with one another. Stress lowers their immune system. To prevent this, make sure to separate them if they ever fight.

These methods should be able to protect your hamsters from getting ill frequently. But remember that hamsters will still get sick no matter how much your try to prevent it. If you want to make sure that your hamster isn’t really sick, then here are some sicknesses that a hamster can get and the symptoms that show the sign of these sicknesses:

• Allergies – Hamsters are allergic to many things including its beddings created from cedar shavings, some foods, cigarette, furniture polish and perfumes. Symptoms include scratching, sneezing, swollen feet, wheezing and runny eyes.

·   Cage Paralysis – Cage paralysis occurs when a hamster is put on a cage too small for it to move around and get some exercise. Symptoms include the hamster appearing to be semi-crippled by dragging its back end. You can simply put it to a bigger cage.

• Colds and Influenza – Humans can easily transmit colds and flu to hamsters. Hamster’s cold can quickly turn into pneumonia and eventually death. Symptoms include sneezing, running nose, watery eyes and a high temperature.

A hamster easily gets infected with illnesses especially when it is not taken care of properly. If you want to make your hamster happy, then giving it the gift of health should be the best gift you can ever give to a pet.