Buttermilk

Full name: Buttermilk Biscuit.
Species: Syrian hamster.
Sex: male.
Appearance: long-haired ("teddybear"), blond with a white band.
Adult weight: 120-130g (4.5 ounces or a little less).
Born: around April 30, 1997.
Came to live with us: June 11, 1997.
Died: July 24, 1998.

Click on any picture to see a larger version (most are 20-40K).

Buttermilk was our third hamster, bought at a pet store in Cape Girardeau, Missouri after our first hamster-less period in over three years. We had just taken a whirlwind tour of Kansas City, Saint Louis, and parts east and south, and when we came home to Cape Girardeau, we determined to get another hamster as quickly as possible. Shortly, we found a sleepy little furball at the local pet store. He woke up in my wife's hand, and we fell in love with him.

When we took him home and introduced him to his new cage, he was very cautious. We brought him in a cardboard box, and it was several minutes before he was willing to leave it. After twenty minutes, he was brave enough to cross to the other side of the cage. I don't think he explored the whole cage for a couple of days.

The day we got him, I decided I would keep track of his weight. He started at a mere 1.2 ounces, but grew rapidly. You can get a weight chart by clicking on the small chart at the bottom of the page.

You can read more about Buttermilk and our other hamsters in The Hamster Chronicles. The section on Buttermilk starts with Part 10. For more and better pictures of Buttermilk, see Buttermilk's Close-Up Page.

Here's Buttermilk sitting in one of our dining-room table chairs. You can see he was mostly hair. Some people have bad hair days; Buttermilk had a bad hair life. You can also see that, for all his weird hair, he was still awfully cute.

Here's Buttermilk climbing out of the two-liter bottle attached to his cage; he used the bottle as his burrow.

"Percy's Palace" is the name of the cage. Percy was the hamster we had before Buttermilk. We keep Percy's Palace in the corner of our living room. We don't usually leave the bottle open like this; however, it was a good last-resort way to get Buttermilk out. Sometimes he holed up in his bottle and wouldn't come out for anything. Then we'd open his bottle and sit back and watch; often he came out by himself.

Here, Buttermilk is being held while he eats a vanilla wafer. He was not terribly fond on lying on his back, but, hey, anything for a vanilla wafer. He also liked nuts, noodles, rice, Pop-Tarts, and some kinds of cereal. Surprisingly, he was not extremely fond of sunflower seeds, although he would eat them.

Here's Buttermilk sitting in the scale tray. It's the top of a little scale I used to weigh him every day. After he got used to it, he liked just sitting in it. Often we would put a piece of paper or a napkin over the tray while he was in it; then he had a little hidey-hole he could feel safe in. Sometimes he would wash himself, have a meal, and then go to sleep in the tray.

Here are the results of Buttermilk's daily weighings.

A book I read said that Syrian hamsters are full-grown at 12 weeks. But if Buttermilk was 6 weeks old when we bought him, then at 12 weeks he weighed 3.3 ounces, hardly his full adult weight. In fact Buttermilk wasn't quite done growing even 12 weeks after we bought him.

Click on the chart to see a larger graph. You can also get Buttermilk's chart in more reasonable units.

Next, take a look at Buttermilk's Close-Ups. Or go back to Glenn's Hamster Page.