At the end of a long and hard day, nothing quite beats the relief of greeting your nicely made and perfectly soft (to your liking) bed. Offering that end-of-the-day comfort to your furry friend should not be dismissed. More to the point, in much the same way you have options about what you sleep on, your hamster should also.
There are a myriad of different options available for hamster bedding. Paper-based bedding, straw, certain kinds of moss, shredded cardboard, and even hay can all make for fantastic bedding arrangements for your hamster.
This article covers all of the different bedding alternatives that your hamster can have. We all want to save a dollar here and there, so it is wise to know this information. However, it is also wise to know what bedding they cannot have, which we will discuss. It is essential to understand both to decide what works best for you and your little furry friend.
Different Alternative Hamster Bedding Options
Diving deeper, specific bedding options qualify for unique traits like durability, absorbency, or even affordability. However, it’s worth noting that not all options are positive alone. Some have specific negatives that can even become dangerous to your hamster if left untreated.
For those reasons alone, we’ll discuss why specific options make the list and, if they do have any potential setbacks, how to overcome them. You want a bedding choice that fits your lifestyle and price range and keeps your hamster safe, as you can’t rightly put a price on that.
1. Timothy or Regular Hay
Either of these wonderful hays is beneficial to your hamster’s life, but the reasons why might astonish you. First, both Timothy and regular hay are widely available and easily affordable, making them remarkably easy to get a hold of. Even more to the point, they have a bit of duality to them, as most hamsters enjoy eating hay as well as sleeping on it.
If you choose to invest in hay as bedding, you’ll get the additive benefit of being more cost-effective than other options and making your money stretch quite nicely. Neither of these hays cuts any corners in terms of comfort or nutritional value, either, but there is one potentially negative aspect about it, and that boils down to quality.
Hay comes in quite a few different “cuts,” which essentially mean how the hay is obtained and whether or not the edges are simply cut fast, which can result in sharp ends, or soft-cut, which almost guarantees there are no edges to worry about for your hamster.
Given the choice, you’ll want to go for soft-cut, obviously. Your hamster getting pokes and scrapes while eating or sleeping on the hay just isn’t ideal, and said wounds can become problematic if they aren’t noticed in time, so double-check before purchasing!
2. Toilet Paper
Because we use toilet paper on a daily basis, it’s easy to understand why this might make the list. Toilet paper is basically a non-negotiable in most households, and as such, you’ll be killing two birds with one stone if you were to opt to use it as bedding as well as toiletry.
One of the biggest setbacks when it comes to using toilet paper as bedding is the smaller dust particles that come with lesser-quality toilet paper brands or the scents that are often attached to more luxurious brands.
Because a hamster’s respiratory system is so fragile, anything ranging from dust mites to paper particles can adhere to the inside of your hamster’s nostrils and airway, making breathing hard and potentially even fostering infections and other issues.
In much the same way that toilet paper particles can foster painful irritations and irregularities, the scents and aromas from bedding can also cause your hamster’s nasal passage to become inflamed, making breathing difficult and often dangerous.
When selecting a toilet paper brand for bedding (and for your own usage), you’ll want to do some relatively extensive research on what the paper is made of, guarantee that it is scentless, and obviously within your budget.
3. Soft Granule Blends
While some granule blends can definitely meet the affordable and reliable aspects of good bedding, most of them cut corners to achieve that low price, and to that end, your hamster will reap the negative aspects of their shortcomings.
A good granule blend should be free of chemicals, allergens, and particles that can be problematic to your hamster’s well-being. It should also be sturdy enough to allow your pet to make the tunnels they love and the nests that they want to cuddle into for a night of beauty rest.
In most cases, you’ll be better off going with something else entirely, as the cleaning aspects of most granule blends become problematic, to say the least. This makes affordability and utility a sidebar conversation, but they are an option.
4. Aspen
Obviously, not the entire tree, but more notable shavings from it. Aspen is notoriously useful in bedding because the shavings themselves are dust-free, which makes them a key component in your hamster’s well-being. More to the point, being tree shavings, they are highly absorbent and natural, making them a triple-threat powerhouse of a bedding choice.
These small shavings also have a few extra benefits outside of just being comfortable and natural. The shavings themselves can absorb so much moisture that they inhibit the growth of fungus or even bacterial growth (which is rare amongst routine cleaners but always a possibility), and as such, they can stop the bugs and pests that might seek out such scents and food types.
The final feather in Aspen Shaving’s cap is that because they are literally tree shavings, they have a certain level of rigidity that allows them to make great burrowing fodder, further increasing your hamster’s activity levels and helping simulate a more natural environment.
5. Hemp Bedding
Hemp bedding has almost all the same unique qualifiers that aspen shavings have but with a bit more logistical twist. Aspen trees take quite some time to grow, while hemp, on the other hand, has an extremely high growth rate, allowing it to be replanted and harvested at an alarming rate. Thus, hemp is overall the better choice for the environment for more eco-invested individuals.
Just like aspen, hemp bedding has extremely durable structural qualities that allow it to shape into a burrow or nest quite easily. This makes fostering your hamsters’ more primal instincts easier. Finally, hemp bedding is usually quite affordable, too, so you won’t be breaking the bank to make your hamster’s bed comfortable either!
6. Specific Types of Shredded Paper
The key word here, specific, as some types of shredded paper generate those pesky particles we were mentioning earlier, or worse, have ink on them, which can bleed from the paper themselves when soiled, or worse, be ingested by your hamster, which can lead to mild stomach irritation at the least, to full on allergic reaction, or stomach damage.
You’ll also want to be mindful of how said paper was shredded, as there is still the very real possibility of paper cuts on your hamster’s paws, nose, or eyes if the paper was shredded poorly, such injuries are often tough to catch early and are often only noticeably when accompanied by your hamster limping, or a smell that has begun to fester from infection.
7. Cardboard
Conventionally speaking, cardboard sounds like it would make a fantastic choice. For raw absorbance, it is okay, and you’ll additionally be able to find some almost anywhere. The problem, however, is that it is very prone to splintering apart when slightly damp, and the pieces themselves are often very rough, making it difficult to use as a proper bedding alternative.
In a perfect world, you wouldn’t want to use cardboard bedding for these reasons, but if stores are closed, or you are in between a holiday or some other kind of outside circumstance where no other options are available, it will get you by until something else becomes more readily available.
If you do have to resort to using cardboard as a temporary solution, your best bet is to rotate it out every other day to avoid some of its more common negative aspects and keep your hamster as safe as possible.
8. Empty Tea Bags
The average person might be very hard-pressed to see how tea bags could ever be a bedding option for hamsters, but if you put some thought into it, the innate absorbent qualities coupled with the softness of the material can easily make for a superb bedding option, especially when you sprinkle cost-effectiveness into the equation.
Tea bags themselves are relatively easy to cut and shape into whatever size enclosure you are attempting to accommodate. In most cases, you can get them in dust-extracted variants, which, as you know, is critical for your hamster’s well-being.
When layered properly, the thinner tea bags can become quite malleable as a tunnel base, and even more situationally, true nests can be built out of them. The very same layering technique also makes cleaning a breeze because you’ll be able to see the isolated areas that have been used.
What Alternative Bedding Is Not Safe for Hamsters?
It goes somewhat without saying, but there are bedding types that sound good on paper (pun intended) but don’t truthfully play out in a way that you’d imagine. We’ll go over a few, but the primary reasoning behind why you wouldn’t want to use some of these methods would ring true in a vast majority of other circumstances not listed here, with your big ones being dust particles, dangerous edges, and possibly fostering fungus and bacteria.
1. Newspaper
Keeping up to speed on current events is a notable endeavor, but when you are done with them, some people would love the idea of getting the most out of their money and utilizing it in any way possible. However, newspapers should best be used for DIY projects or other art pieces, as they aren’t even remotely safe for hamster bedding.
The reason is that newspapers are obviously printed with ink, and this ink will often bleed out when the paper is exposed to water or urine, at which point it will become airborne and possibly adhere to your hamster’s paws and coat.
If your hamster tries to clean itself, it will inevitably ingest the ink if it doesn’t attempt to eat the newspaper directly. So it’s easy to understand why you wouldn’t want to choose this as a bedding option, especially considering newspaper ink is typically toxic to hamsters or dangerous at the very least.
2. Cat Litter
While cat litter is absorbent enough to handle your cat’s waste and can help combat odors with a litany of other perks and benefits, the litter’s granulated qualities, in conjunction with scents and particles, make it very dangerous for use as hamster bedding.
You can’t even take solace in the comfort of the smaller pebbles because, truthfully, even these might become tangled between your hamster’s paws. Worse, if your hamster were to go to the restroom, some of the litter may clump up on your hamster’s coat, actively becoming a breeding ground for bacterial infection and disease.
3. Scented Bedding
Eluding any specific kinds of bedding in general, the broader overhead and focus on the scented aspect of any bedding would make it a horrible choice for your hamster’s sensitive nose and respiratory system.
Unfortunately, no amount of pleasant scents can make up for the dangerous possibility that any scented bedding can induce, as your hamster’s breathing passages can become inflamed, swollen, or damaged with even minimal exposure; you just would be better off choosing something else.
As a side note, you’ll also want to avoid any aromatics in the vicinity of your hamster when attempting to combat undesired smells, as even these can achieve that same level of threat. For example, small air fresheners, sprayable ones, or types that plugin can all put your hamster in danger.
4. Sawdust
Sawdust is readily available in a wide variety of locations, and some producers would even be willing to give it away or possibly pay you to take it from them. However, the particles from the wood shavings themselves are very capable of sticking to the insides of your hamster’s nose, mouth, and ears, becoming a latent danger regardless of their cost-effectiveness.
Can I Keep a Hamster Without Bedding?
Hamster bedding is simply non-negotiable when it comes to owning one of these fluffy fellows. The bedding itself serves as a key component for the vast majority of their lives, linking everything from their eating habits to exploration and even sleeping. You need bedding for your hamster to lead a happy life.
If your hamster lacks the absorbent quality of good bedding to soak up its waste, it will just remain idle at the bottom of the cage, quickly making a rank smell. It may also be directly tread upon by your hamster, making its coat a mess and spreading it throughout the enclosure.
What Should Hamsters Sleep In?
Ideally, your hamster should sleep inside a sizeable enclosure with appropriate bedding that not only fits their needs but also accommodates burrowing. This is not only healthy for your hamster from an activity standpoint, but, more importantly, it emphasizes more natural behaviors, which will let your hamster lead a happier, healthier lifestyle in the long run.
Final Thoughts
Hamster bedding might have more than a handful of choices, but of them, you’ll want to be very mindful of how they shape the course of your hamster day, whether or not your pet’s base needs are met, and ensure that the bedding itself allows them to be comfortable and expressive of their daily lives.
