10 DIY Hamster Maze Ideas & Plans You Can Make Today (With Pictures)
By Jessica Kim
Updated on
In the wild, hamsters can travel anywhere between 2–9 miles a day. Hamsters are natural foragers and thrive on being able to explore. So, it’s beneficial for them to get out of their cages to exercise. Creating mazes can add fun challenges to their daily routine, and hamsters will appreciate engaging in worthwhile enrichment activities to stay mentally and physically active.
Fortunately, it doesn’t really take much to create your own hamster maze. With a little time and creativity, you can make some fun and challenging mazes for your hamster. Here are some simple DIY hamster maze ideas to help you get started.
The 10 DIY Hamster Mazes
1. DIY Hamster Maze from Cardboard
| Materials: | Cardboard, craft sticks |
| Tools: | Hot glue gun, ruler, boxcutter |
| Difficulty Level: | Easy |
Cardboard hamster mazes are one of the most common types of DIY mazes you’ll find. This basic plan provides all the essentials for a beginner hamster maze. It includes a ramp and burrowing box.
When making a hamster maze, make sure to cut the maze walls high enough so that your hamster can’t climb over them. You can also lay out a few treats along the path to help your hamster find the end of the maze. Once you get the hang of making a basic maze layout, you can move on to creating more unique and complex maze pieces to challenge your hamster.
2. DIY Cardboard Maze Pieces
| Materials: | Cardboard, glue |
| Tools: | Scissors, box cutter |
| Difficulty Level: | Easy |
You’ll quickly find that cardboard will become your best friend when you’re making DIY hamster maze pieces. Once you get the basics down, you can get really creative with the types of obstacles and maze pieces you create for your hamster. These plans include fun hideaways, steps, and treat trays that you can make relatively quickly. It’ll also be fun for your hamster if you hide some treat trays throughout the maze track, and this will also keep them motivated.
3. Straw Maze Obstacle
| Materials: | Straws, cardboard |
| Tools: | Hot glue gun |
| Difficulty Level: | Easy |
Straw obstacles add an extra challenge to mazes. They’re also a great form of mental and physical exercise for hamsters, as hamsters have to figure out how to weave through the straws. You can start by gluing straws vertically to a cardboard base. Once your hamster gets good at navigating through this setup, you can start to glue straws in varying directions to increase the difficulty level.
4. Paper Roll Tube Maze Obstacle
| Materials: | Cardboard, cardboard tube |
| Tools: | Scissors, hot glue gun |
| Difficulty Level: | Easy |
Cardboard tube maze obstacles are beginner-friendly challenges for hamsters that are new to mazes. You can easily incorporate them into a cardboard maze and cut them to shorter lengths to encourage shy hamsters to go through them.
Once your hamster gets used to going through cardboard tubes, you can start to connect them together to make them longer. You can also cut holes in the middle of the tube to create multiple entryways.
5. Digging Tower Maze Piece
| Materials: | Wood sheets, Perspex sheet, screws, non-toxic glue |
| Tools: | Circle hole cutter, drill |
| Difficulty Level: | Easy |
Burrowing is a natural hamster behavior, and digging towers can be great enrichment activities for hamsters. This DIY digging tower has one clear wall that enables you to view your hamster. Once you’ve built it, you can fill it with any hamster-safe substrate and hide some treats in it to encourage your hamster to burrow. Digging towers often make good final challenges for your hamster. Once they dig up their treats, they can take a nice nap inside.
6. DIY Lego Hamster Maze
| Materials: | Legos |
| Tools: | None |
| Difficulty Level: | Easy |
If you have a pile of Legos, you can create some fun Lego maze tracks. Since it’s easy to piece the Lego blocks together, you can involve your kids and spend the afternoon creating fun challenges for your hamster. With all the different kinds of Lego pieces that are out there, you can get really creative with designing unique mazes. Just keep in mind that the walls of your maze should be built high enough so that your hamster can’t climb over them.
7. DIY Plastic Water Bottle Hamster Maze
| Materials: | Water bottles, tape |
| Tools: | Scissors |
| Difficulty Level: | Easy |
This plastic water bottle maze is a great way to upcycle water bottles. All you have to do is cut both ends of the water bottles and tape them together. You can get really creative with how you design your maze by cutting holes in the middle of the water bottles to create different tunnel exits. While it’s not completely necessary, you can use a push pin to poke small holes in the water bottles for added ventilation.
8. Hamster Ball Pit Maze Obstacle
| Materials: | Container, pompoms, round beads |
| Tools: | Glue gun, scissors |
| Difficulty Level: | Easy |
Adding a ball pit to your hamster’s maze can be a fun and new challenge for hamsters to navigate through. All you need is a plastic container, or you can quickly construct a small container using cardboard pieces. Then, you can fill up the container with round beads or pom poms.
Just keep in mind that this maze obstacle isn’t recommended for hamsters that tend to chew excessively. Your hamster also should never be left unsupervised with the ball pit in case they try to store the beads in their mouth.
9. DIY Ladder Maze Piece
| Materials: | Wooden dowel, craft sticks, zip ties, screw-in mug hooks |
| Tools: | Yardstick, hand saw, drill |
| Difficulty Level: | Easy |
Ladders are a fun obstacle challenge for hamsters that are experienced maze runners. They’re also great to use for vertical maze layouts. This wooden ladder is quick and easy to make, and it requires a minimal number of tools and materials.
One of the most important things to consider when making this ladder is to space out the steps so that your hamsters can’t completely slip through and injure themselves.
10. DIY Donut Maze Piece
| Materials: | Cardboard tube, tissue, non-toxic craft glue, pet-safe paint, flour, water |
| Tools: | Pencil, ruler, scissors, paintbrush |
| Difficulty Level: | Easy |
This fun and cute donut piece makes a great addition as a maze obstacle. All you need are a couple of basic art supplies and some time. You’re essentially making a papier mâché donut by using the cardboard tube as your frame and layering it with tissue.
A great thing about this maze piece is that it’s lightweight, so you can stick it anywhere. It’s also biodegradable, so you can toss it away guilt-free after it’s had its run.
Conclusion
It really doesn’t take much to create fun mazes and maze pieces for your hamster, but your hamster can benefit so much from them. There’s a lot you can do with a little cardboard and craft sticks. So, let your creativity run wild and see how many fun challenges you can create for your adorable little hamster.
Featured Image Credit: tanya_morozz, Shutterstock
