Do mice and hamsters emit unpleasant odors?

Question

I've been thinking about getting some as pets, but I'm afraid they might make my house smell funny. Are some breeds less stinky than others? Do males smell worse than females?

Answer 1

If you are worried about odor, I would highly recommend getting a female mouse or hamster. Not so much because they are clean, but because male hamsters will mark their "territory" or rather, they will pee until the entire room smells. You can also prevent odor by making sure your mouse/hamster's health is good. You don't want the hamster to have an allergic reaction to it's bedding. My last piece of advice is to make sure the cage is in a dry place, and that it is well circulated. I have had problems with CritterTrail1 because my hamster was bringing all his bedding to the small viewing area located toward the ceiling of the cage, which caused it to become very humid and smelly! Clean the cage frequently, not necessarily every single day, or even week. If your pet has a designated potty spot, the bedding lasts much longer!

Answer 2

The least smelly rodents I've kept are rats. They pick one area of their cage for a toilet and if you put a small plastic tray filled with their litter there it's easy to dump that pan every day and the stink never builds up. I can smell clean rats (I have been blessed or cursed with a good sense of smell) but they aren't objectionable.

On the other end of the spectrum are mice. They reek, a horrible pissy stench. I cleaned the mouse breeder boxes every day and they stank worse than a rat cage that not had it's litter changed except for the toilet area for a week. I don't know why mice stink worse. They just do.

Answer 3

Hamster breeds make no difference. Mice don't have breeds, they just have color variations and that doesn't effect anything.
Well, mice smell badly (especially males) and hamsters smell pretty unpleasant, too. Males do smell worse than females, but if you cleaned the cage, like, every 5 days or so, it probably won't get that bad.

Answer 4

Mice stink horribly, I had three of them and changed the cage everyday, they have very bad smells. Just go to a petstore and have a whiff of thier cage.

Hamster don't stink very much. Males tend to have more enjoyable odors than females.

Just change the cage when it gets ripe

Answer 5

They do smell a little but that is only if you don't change their bedding for a while. They make great pets. I have a Russian Dward Hamster, they grow to about 3" in lenght and are very adorable. According to what I heard, they also only live for about a year but ours is about 3 now and she is still going.

Answer 6

Actually it depends the sex of your mice or hamster. ( males ) tend to have pheromones in their urin and sray and can smell way worse than even cat spray. i have two fancy male mice & they smell horrible you can buy (bi-odor) it costs about 12 bucks, you can put it in your small pets water and it will reduce any smell from your animal it is perfectly natural and harmless and it works let me know what you do id love to help.

Answer 7

I owned a dwarf hamster and if you don't clean the cage often it will smell pretty bad. Smells of urine and fecess are horrible if left for days in the cage, but once you clean it doesn't smell bad.

Answer 8

You really have to watch out for mouse farts!

Just kidding. We have a hamster. No smells of any significance with reasonably regular cage cleaning.

Answer 9

Yes the cage stinks when they pee. I have a gerbil it is almost like a hamster. If the cage isn't cleaned frequently it gives the whole room an odor.

Answer 10

both males and females smell the same. You will need to get good odour absorbent bedding. Even so, need to change once a week. I feed my hamsters a japanese food brand which controls the urine odour.