Ira died yesterday. He was around 20 months old, possibly a couple of months older but we don't know how old he was when we bought him. He's buried in the back garden next to his brother Uri, who died last year.

We took him to the vets last wednesday because Emma found him with his leg trapped in the cage and thought it might be broken. He appeared to be in pain and had difficulty walking. The vet gave him a tiny shot of painkiller and he perked up and was soon walking about, so it must only have been injured.
We removed the wheels from the cage and blocked off the upstairs of the 'hamster castle' to minimise any chances of him hurting himself. We waited until he seemed ok for a couple of days before putting the wheels back in. He must have built up huge reserves of energy because he was running around much more than normal.

We thought he had made a full recovery but the ordeal may have put too much stress on him.

Although Uri and Ira were both girls, it is quite difficult to sex roborovski hamsters, especially if you only have a picture or diagram for comparison. Although we have known for quite a while that they were actually female we had got into the habit of calling them 'he'.