Ah, the miracle of life. Nothing is more rewarding (and educational) then seeing it for yourself. Animals all have their different ways of giving birth and care for their newborns. If you're an owner of a pregnant pet you'll want to know the proper way to care for her and her young. You need to know when to step in and when to just let mother nature do her thing. And whether you purposely bred your hamster or you, like most others, find out your two males are actually a male and a female, or you innocently and unexpectedly bring a hamster in the family way home from the pet store, you'll want to know how to take care of her.
I found out the hard way what to do with a hamster who has given birth. As a teenager I was that kid that brought home random animals all the time, much to my mother's chagrin. One fateful weekend when she had to go out of town I took it upon myself to go to the pet store and purchase a hamster with my own money. I figured if I was paying for it by myself my mom wouldn't object. And it's possible she may not have.... if said hamster didn't give birth to 14 squirming pink, naked jelly beans the day after I bought her!
There was no internet back then to look up information so my response was that of a stunned kid - I panicked, stared and did nothing. As it turns out this was the best thing to do. Well - maybe not the panicking part. The truth is hamsters don't need you to be their midwife or wet nurse. They don't want you to hover anxiously around the cage. The certainly don't want their surrounding disturbed by constant cleaning. The best thing you can do is keep the mother properly fed and watered and then just leave her alone.
If you're aware that you have a pregnant female there are a few things you can do to make her more comfortable and prevent any tragedies from occurring after the birth - but you need to act fast! Depending on the breed your hamster will be pregnant for 14-21 days and by the time you notice that she is indeed pregnant the impending birth may be close at hand. When you first discover your female is pregnant remove any other hamsters that may share her cage. Let her retain custody of the initial cage so she doesn't panic by being moved to a new location. You can give her extra hamster vitamins or some raw veggies to munch on. The mother will want to keep her babies hidden for the first few weeks so make sure there is enough fluff in there. Better yet you can get a hamster igloo that she can give birth in and keep her babies until they can walk out on their own.
Sometimes a mother hamster will eat her young. This is distressing and disturbing to watch, but you have to trust that mother nature is doing what is right. In the wild most mothers know when there is something wrong with one of her litter and will take the necessary actions. Or if she has too many babies that she thinks she can safely take care of she will eliminate how ever many she needs to. If you constantly hover around the cage, put your hand in there too much other than to drop off food, try to disturb the nest by too much housekeeping or attempt to handle any of the babies before they are at least 10 days old you will stress out the mother or anger her. This almost always results in her devouring a baby or two. If you've given her an igloo do not disturb it.
After a few short weeks you will see the babies begin to walk around, and eventually try to escape. Hamsters must be part Houdini because their escape tactics are legendary. By four weeks you need to separate the males from the females. The gender of hamsters is a bit difficult to tell if they are too young, which is frustrating because while YOU may not be able to tell who's who the boys will certainly know who's female and they WILL impregnate them at four weeks of age. You can take them in to a petshop that has someone who specializes in rodents if you can't tell the difference or you can get many small cages and place them in solitary confinement until you find them a new home. You do NOT want to run the risk of accidentally leaving a female in a cage full of males - horrific things will happen. Just trust me on that one.
Because you are able to separate them from the mother at 4 weeks you can certainly start pawning them off on unsuspecting friends or seeing if the pet store will take them. Some times a pet store will buy them or offer you store credit for baby hamsters. And then sometimes they'll just safely take them off your hands. Whatever the case you will need to either have a lot of cages in your own house or sell them because a bunch of same-sex hamsters in one habitat will end in a cage match that will outshine Mad Max. Hamsters live quite happily and peacefully all on their own - they prefer it that way.
There isn't any good reason to breed a hamster on purpose. There are plenty of hamsters in the world to go around and baby hamsters are far from profitable. If you find yourself with an unexpectedly pregnant female you can set her up with a comfortable birthing environment and then just step back for a few weeks. Then get those little buggers out of there and vow never to do it again!