How to make a drinking bowl for a hamster with your own hands at home

You don’t want to buy a drinker from the store, or do you just like crafting? One way or another, we will try to help you and tell you how to make a drinking bowl for a hamster with your own hands at home. There is nothing difficult in this, the device can be made within five minutes. The main thing is to have the necessary materials.

Types of drinkers for pets

Before you make a drinking bowl for a hamster with your own hands, you need to decide which design is more desirable. There are several types of drinkers for installation in cages. Basically, they are divided into floor and hanging. All of them differ in device and principle of operation. Stores usually sell nipple ones, and home-made ones are of two types – with a nipple, like factory ones, and with a straw – a tube for juice or a cocktail.

Materials and tools for making drinkers

For the device of a drinking bowl there is no need to specially purchase materials or tools. Every home has what it needs.

Material for drinkers:

• container (plastic bottle, medicine bottle, etc.);
• straw for juice;
• a metal ball, a fountain pen and a wooden block for the nipple;
• glue “Moment”;
• rope or strong thread for hanging.

For the manufacture of a floor drinker, there is only one requirement – a wooden plank, to which a container should be attached for stability.

Tools for the job:

• sharp knife;
• ruler;
• marker;
• a hammer;
• nail (or drill).

This set is enough to make a drinking bowl for a hamster.

Types of drinkers

To understand the issue, you need to know how a drinking bowl for hamsters is arranged, and only then get down to business. The hanging drinker consists of two parts – a container and a tube. There are drinkers that constantly drip at short intervals – most often homemade, made from droppers or straws for juice. Nipple drinkers supply water only when the animal presses the tongue on the ball. Floor automatic drinking bowls are similar in principle to bird ones, which work according to the law of Archimedes.

 Nipple drinker

Instead of a tube, you can insert a body from a fountain pen with a built-in nipple into the container. Making a nipple is easy. There is only one requirement – the presence of a metal ball from the bearing, which is placed inside the housing from the wide side. Then it is necessary to mark the place where it is stuck, and cut off the cone of the body a little so that the ball protrudes slightly, but does not fall out. From above you need to throw a weak spring (you can take it from a fountain pen) and lightly press it down with a wooden wedge.

The main thing is that the wedge does not occupy all the space and let water through. After that, the pen is inserted into the bottle cap. It is convenient and easy to water your pet from it. It is enough for the hamster to lightly press on the ball, and water will flow from the tube. The fountain pen can be inserted not into the lid, but into the sidewall, positioned at an angle and sealed with a “Moment” junction. Then the bottle can not be hung, but placed on the floor of the cage.

Drinking bowl from a whole plastic bottle

In order to make a drinker from a whole plastic bottle, a lot of effort is not needed. Such drinkers are made for large hamsters who drink quite a lot. It is enough to take a half-liter container, or even a volume of 330 ml or less.

All that needs to be done is to unscrew the lid and make a small hole in it exactly in the center. You can do this with a nail or a drill, observing the main rule – the hole should be slightly smaller than the tube – then water will not flow out. If the hole turned out to be larger – it doesn’t matter, after inserting the tube, the gap can be sealed with Moment glue. In this case, the device cannot be used until the adhesive has dried. But usually, if you do everything right, then a homemade drinking bowl for hamsters should not leak.

The corrugated straw must be cut into two halves before installation. It is inserted into the lid so that the bend with the corrugation remains outside, and it can be bent in any direction. After that, you need to fill the container with water and hang it with a rope so that the tube does not touch any objects. The end of it should be located so that the hamster can easily reach it, it depends on the size of the pet. To water a jungarik, it is enough to raise it 5 centimeters from the floor. Instead of bottles, you can use medicine bottles – this is enough for a Djungarian hamster.

Drinking bowl from a cut bottle

In order to make this type of drinker, you need to cut off a third of the bottle, leaving the top with the neck. It is convenient to cut with a stationery knife with removable blades. If there is no such knife, then you can make it ordinary by preheating the blade in a flame of fire – then it will cut the plastic like butter.

Then you should punch a hole in the lid and insert a tube into it – this stage does not differ from that described above. In order to hang a drinker, holes for a rope can be made in the upper part from two sides.

Such a do-it-yourself drinking bowl for a hamster is different in that it does not need to be disassembled in order to fill it with water, you can simply top it up. The main rule is to wash it regularly.

Floor drinkers

Floor drinkers overy easy to manufacture. However, they have two drawbacks. Such drinkers quickly become dirty, they are often knocked over. To protect against dirt, you can make the sides higher, but so that it is comfortable for the pet to drink. You should not make it from plastic bottles, the pet can cut itself on a sharp side, it is better to choose something with thicker walls. To give stability, the cup can be glued to a wooden bar measuring 10×10 cm. Also at home, you can arrange a vacuum drinking bowl from a plastic bottle. To do this, you need a cup with high sides, to the bottom of which a lid is glued. A bottle is screwed to it, in which a small hole is made just below the rim of the cup. Water will flow into the cup and always stay at the same level. For stability, the device can be tied to the cage wall.

If your pet does not drink from a drinker, read the tips in the article “Training a hamster to drink from a drinker”.

These simple tips will help you save money on buying drinking bowls and make a non-standard and original design at home.