About Us

We are very passionate about hamsters. Our goal is to give pet owners in our area access to healthy, well-bred, tame hamsters. We are located in Huntley, Illinois. Huntley is in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.

Hamsters are super cute and fun to handle. Hamsters are speedy, curious, energetic, and offer tons of entertainment. You can sit beside the cage, and watch your hamster at work and play as they burrow and climb. It is fun to watch them fill their cheek pouches with food and then watch them empty them into their safe tucked-away place to eat later. They will even stuff their cheeks with bedding material to bring back to their nest! Outside the cage, they will explore the environment, scrambling up your arms and crawling over your legs. They make a great first pet for children as they are easy to care for while teaching a child responsibility (changing water daily, feeding hamster, keeping cage clean).

How Nantucket Hamstery hamster care is different from commercially bred pet shop hamsters:

Our hamsters are fed a high quality diet which includes: Higgins Sunburst seed, Mazuri Brand Rodent Blocks, fresh fruits and vegetables, dried meal worm, hard boiled eggs along with other hamster safe foods.
During the summer/fall months all of our hamsters are fed Organic Heirloom vegetables from our garden.
Our hamsters are kept in a clean, healthy environment.
We run an air purifier 24/7 in our hamster room to ensure fresh, clean air that keeps the particulates in the air down. Our HEPA filter traps 99.97% of all particles down to 0.3 microns. This helps to ensure our hamsters have healthy respiratory systems.
Our hamsters are given a variety of toys and proper wheels.
Our hamsters are housed in large sized bin cages.
Our females hamsters are only bred for the first time between the safe age of 4-6 months.
We do not overbreed our female hamsters. Our females never have more then two to three litters in their lifetime and are fully recovered before they are bred again.
Once our hamster pups eyes open at around 14 days of age, they are handled daily so they receive proper socialization.
Our hamster pups are kept with their mother for a full four weeks so they can nurse and be cared for by mom.
All of our hamsters are Pedigree hamsters. We know both the genotype and phenotype (genes and color/pattern) of all our adult hamsters and their pups. Our hamsters come from many generations of privately bred hamsters.
We keep records of our hamsters and all of the pups born at Nantucket Hamstery.
We educate on proper hamster care.
Once our hamsters are adopted we love to hear how the pups are doing and we are happy to answer any questions.

Most people are unaware that pet shop hamsters are bred in the hundreds by commercial breeders. These hamsters are taken away from their mothers at a very young age and transported around the country with very little human contact, which often results in aggressive hamsters. All of our hamsters are handled daily from the day it is safe to do so. We will never sell a hamster if we are not confident it is tame. Due to the stresses the pet shop hamsters have been through they are also prone to ‘wet tail’, which can be fatal to many young hamsters especially if veterinary help is not sought quickly enough.

This all adds up to quite a big difference. Our hamsters are household pets brought up in our home. Much emphasis is put on hand taming the hamsters to make them happy and enjoyable pets, while striving for quality, healthy hamsters.