How old should hamsters be before mating them?
Syrian (non-dwarf) hamsters should be 12 – 13 weeks (about 3 months) old for best results. Dwarf hamsters should be 3 – 4 months old. If the mother is too young, she may not produce enough milk for her babies. Also, a very young mother can sometimes be so stressed that she may kill her own babies. Even though some books say females up to 18 months of age can have babies, from my personal experience, I would not recommend mating a female over 9-10 months old, just to be safe. I have had two bad experiences with hamster mothers just over 12 months old. In one case, a previously successful mother had one large stillborn baby and then she died. In the other case, the mother had four babies, one with a leg deformity, which died, and then the mother died of malnutrition. Her body couldn’t seem to recover from giving birth.
