Hamsters are bon vivants that will swallow anything you offer them. But only proper food and a balanced diet will keep them healthy.
Hamsters are "three-quarters vegetarian", they do have a vegetarian diet, but they also need animal protein from time to time. Make sure that your food is varied and balanced, i.e. a well thought-out combination of seeds, fresh food, supplements and gnawing food. Naturally, there should be no shortage of small treats. Find the list of hamster food a little further down!
Basics
Just feed the hamster once a day - preferably at the same time. For the quantities, rely on experience. Give just enough food so that there is hardly any left over for the next day; the ration is then ideal. But it is easy to make mistakes. Some people increase the portions when they see that everything has been eaten. In reality, the hamster has hidden the food somewhere. So check that its hiding places do not contain any food. If the food is spoiled, remove it.
Important: The food must not be mouldy, spoiled or soaked.
The Art of Inventory Management
The particularity of hamsters to stock up on food has already brought them some notoriety. Any hamster, unless it is really hungry, first stuff the food given to it in its cheeks, before going to carry it in its nest or in a clean corner of the cage, in other words in its pantry. Everything is carefully sorted and stacked, and this pantry, for the hamster, is sacred. In fact, it should not be touched. But since the hamster, in spite of all his care, cannot judge which foodstuffs are perishable and which are not, it is necessary to check every day whether there is any food that is mouldy or rotting. Have a small pair of tongs for this purpose, so that there is as little clutter as possible in the storerooms, and so that your small storekeeper does not have to start putting everything away again after your intervention.
Our advice: If the hamster no longer sleeps in its shelter, or is looking for a bed elsewhere in the cage, check whether it has not put so much food in its nest that it has no more room for itself.
Why is he stockpiling?
A safety measure: hoarding food and eating it only when it is safe is a common behaviour of many small rodents, which are easy prey for their predators.
A stock for the winter: what is remarkable about the hamster is that it builds up real stocks for the bad days. In its burrow, there are special pantries, which it is particularly active to fill in the fall. The dwarf hamster accumulates at this season reserves with which it will have to hold from seven to nine months.
The hamster is extremely careful in its choice of food for the winter. The ripe seeds are carefully sorted and all the elements that rot easily, such as the glume, are discarded. But it also stores live food. In the pantry of a dwarf hamster, for example, forty different kinds of beetles, four fly larvae, and fifteen spiders were found. All of them were lethargic, practically destined to be eaten as "frozen" food. In the common hamster, too, astonishing observations were made: once in a burrow, seventeen kilos of grain were found, which is sixty times the weight of the hamster itself!
All you can give
Feeding a hamster is simple and inexpensive. It is not difficult and does not require large quantities. You can find a lot of what it needs in the garden or while walking, and for fruits and vegetables, it is easy to take a little of what you buy for yourself. For a healthy and varied diet, you can choose between dry food, green vegetables and greens, proteins, and live food. In your pet shop you will find a wide range of suitable foods.
Adapted foods
Dry foods: hamster kibbles, ready-made mixtures of various seeds (in pet stores); nuts, hazelnuts, peanuts (unsalted); cereals (wheat, oats, corn); seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, hemp); oat flakes.
Greens, fruits and green vegetables: dandelion, chickweed, clover, green grass, sow-thistle, ragwort, shepherd's purse, acanthus; fruits of all kinds; vegetables such as carrots (with the tops), cauliflower, potatoes (without tops and sprouts), tomatoes, spinach, celery, cucumber, lettuce and curly lettuce.
Live food: mealworms (pet food).
Proteins: meat; cottage cheese (lean), yoghurt (even fruit yoghurt).
Supplementary supplies: drinking water; vitamin drops; hay; branches of beech, maple, willow, hazelnut, fruit trees (to be gnawed on); animal cookies.
What not to give (toxic foods)
Some foods are toxic such as: potato skin and sprouts, green sprouts on tomatoes and carrots, fresh beans, belladonna, hemlock, cyst, canned vegetables, cooked foods, tobacco.
Raw beans; potato sprouts; the green of potatoes and tomatoes; æthuse; hemlock; cyst; colchicum; canned or frozen vegetables.
Food 5
The ten basic rules
- Vary the food.
- Make food and water available even during the day (i.e., while resting), as he likes to snack between meals.
- Make sure the food is fresh and of good quality.
- Regularly administer special vitamin drops for small mammals. Mix with yoghurt or mealworms.
- Do not pick up greenery at roadsides (because of exhaust I), in places regularly frequented by dogs (because of bacteria in their excrement), or on the edges of fields used by farmers (pesticides!).
- Wash commercially purchased vegetables, salads and fruits thoroughly and let them drain before feeding them to the hamster.
- Do not give cooked food (whether boiled or roasted), so no leftovers.
- Avoid sudden changes in diet.
- Distribute small portions (cut fruits and vegetables), to avoid waste.
- Serve at room temperature.
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