Exercise wheel, hideout, run: getting your small pet moving

Small pet boredom is quiet. A dog chews up your shoes, a cat sweeps things off the shelf, but a bored hamster or guinea pig just sits in the corner, and from the outside everything looks fine. Yet movement and things to do are just as much a basic need for them, only it means something entirely different for each species. That is the most important sentence in this article: what is a daily workout for one is actively harmful to another.

The wheel belongs to the hamster

In the wild a hamster walks kilometres every night, and the exercise wheel stands in for that. Choosing a good wheel, though, is a science. The running surface must be solid, because feet can get trapped between rungs, and the diameter must let the animal run with a straight back: at least 20 centimetres for a dwarf hamster, closer to 25-30 for a Syrian. Running in a wheel that is too small, back arched, is like you jogging for hours a day hunched over. And a silent, ball-bearing wheel is not for the animal but for you: the hamster will be running at two in the morning either way, and it is better not to learn that from the squeaking.

One important exception: exercise wheels are not for guinea pigs or rabbits. Their spines cannot take the curve of the wheel, so for them it is not a toy but an injury risk. Their exercise comes from territory, not machinery.

Rabbits and guinea pigs need ground to cover

These two species move when there is somewhere to go. Daily time in a run is not an extra but part of proper care: a rabbit needs several hours of free movement a day, and a guinea pig will do laps on its own in a spacious, well-furnished run. The furnishing is the key. Neither species likes standing in the middle of an empty run, because open ground is all danger to the instincts of a prey animal. On terrain full of hideouts, tunnels and obstacles, though, life gets going: a wooden hideout house is cover, lookout and chewing material in one, and between two of them routes and games are born.

Work for the head too

Alongside movement, there should be something to think about. A few proven, penny-cheap ideas:

• Hide part of the daily greens around the run and let them go looking.
• Stuff hay into a toilet-roll tube: chew and puzzle in one.
• Rearrange the hideouts and tunnels weekly, a new map is a programme in itself.
• Hand-feed for a few minutes a day: trust-building is a task too, just a shared one.

The good sign: the joy jump

How do you know you got the programme right? By the visible joy in their movement. A rabbit mid-run suddenly leaps and twists in the air, a guinea pig bounces around like popping corn. Both species do this when they are happy, and it is the best feedback an owner can get.

Cannot decide what size wheel or which hideout suits yours? Write to us and we will help you choose.