Introduction to Gizmo

Gizmo does like Pine nuts 

Gizmo is our 1 year old old Russian Dwarf hybrid with a dominant Winter White gene.  He weighs 51g and he is our tamest and friendliest hamster who actually seeks out human attention, practically daily.  Gizmo is very unusual because he was bought from a pet store and was completely tame by day 3 of being with us.

On day two he would come out when I called his name or if I said Nom Noms (food/treats), he still does.  He was one of our first hamsters, as I had only ever had one hamster about 15 years ago. When the pet shop sold me his cage and told me it was a life long cage, I believed them, but that was my mistake.  Within about a month I had built him a bigger and better habitat which he is still in and he knows every part of it. As you can see in the left hand picture below, there is a huge difference in size from the store bought cage to his new home.

Looking cute at Christmas 

All of our dwarf hamsters have an absolute minimum of 2,800 cm squared (most are bigger than this.  Our Syrian hamsters have much much bigger habitats of around 7000 - 7500 cm squared.  Gizmo used to love getting around in his little ball but as he is so tame we tend to let him free roam on the sofa with supervision.  He is one of my hamsters and is very strongly bonded to me.  If my partner or my daughter put their hands out for him to climb on he rarely goes to them however if he is with one of them and I put my hand out to him, he will run onto it straight away.

Gizmo likes to burrow into his substrate and
pops his head out to be nosy 

Gizmo isn't a great fan of nuts in any form (unless it is peanut butter, which is a limited treat), but he does love meal-worms.  we buy them dried and in the summer I soak them in warm water.  He also loves pumpkin and sunflower seeds and Greek yogurt (again limited treat).  I occasionally make little porridge oat balls for the hamsters.  I mix the oats with water, peanuts, meal-worms and seeds, roll them into little balls and bake them for 10 minutes.  These are high in protein but not in fat so are quite healthy if given 1 or 2 a week. Like I said, he is unusual as store bought pets are rarely tamed as quickly as he was.  He is the most affectionate of all our 6 hamsters (to me anyway) and has never bitten anyone, cackled at anyone or threatened anyone.  So this is my introduction to Gizmo, my tamest fur baby.

Gizmo running around