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Old 10-29-2018, 05:57 PM   #1
larry ben kenobi
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Default Buried her food bowl?

Hi all,

My little Syrian Benni recently buried her entire food dish (with all the hamster mix in it) in her burrowing area. She started doing this when I started scatter feeding, which was a decision I made to try and curb her bar chewing.

When she was in her previous house, she bar chewed a ton -- the evidence is all over that tiny crittertrail So part of me wonders if she will ever grow out of this habit, but I wanted to try. Another thing to note is that her previous owners dumped out all the bedding and the hoards in the crittertrail weekly. I have not done a full cage clean and apart from checking to see if fresh food is spoiling or the bowl has been peed on, I do not remove her hoards.

Anyway, I was still topping up her dish a little as well as scatter feeding a couple of seeds in the shell in various corners of the Detolf. That was the only change I made.

My questions are:
1. Should I retrieve the food dish from where she has buried it?
2. Should I use a new food dish (and leave the buried one) as well as the scatter feeding?

She is an older girl and a rescue so I try to do things on her terms and not traumatize her too much.
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Old 10-29-2018, 06:54 PM   #2
Sasha04
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Default Re: Buried her food bowl?

If sounds like you are doing everything right. Burring there food is quite normal and there is nothing to worry about. This is normal instinct to protect there food from predictors in the wild. The mix from scatter feeding normally sinks down in the bedding, this makes it better as they have to dig a little to find.

If bedding in the bowl bothers you, you can get a bowl with higher edges so it’ll be harder to get bedding in. You can also put the bowl on a bendable wooden bridge aka body bridge that is flat on the ground. Hope this helps!
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Old 10-29-2018, 09:08 PM   #3
Thin Lizzy
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Default Re: Buried her food bowl?

Benni knows where her food dish is, so don't put in another. Like Sasha says, this is perfectly normal, it's her food and this is her way of protecting it.
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Old 10-30-2018, 03:29 AM   #4
larry ben kenobi
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Default Re: Buried her food bowl?

She buried it under like 10" of substrate. Do I dig it up and add food to it, or just keep scatter feeding?
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Old 10-30-2018, 03:43 AM   #5
alpacassei
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Default Re: Buried her food bowl?

Just scatter feed
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Old 10-30-2018, 05:06 AM   #6
cypher
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Default Re: Buried her food bowl?

If it's that deep it sounds as though it just got buried when she's been digging or burrowing rather than her burying it intentionally, when they do that they usually just push some substrate on top so I would just dig it up, you can use both the bowl & scatter feeding together.
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Old 10-30-2018, 01:03 PM   #7
larry ben kenobi
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Default Re: Buried her food bowl?

thank you all for the advice! Today when I went to scatter a little food for her, I found that the bowl had been dragged upwards and just covered with a little substrate. I also saw less bar chewing than normal so hey, whatever keeps her busy!
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Old 10-30-2018, 06:17 PM   #8
Sasha04
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Default Re: Buried her food bowl?

That’s great!
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food, dish, buried, feeding, scatter, bar, hoards, crittertrail, previous, made, started, bowl, seeds, couple, shell, remove, peed, topping, spoiling, fresh, older, girl, leave, rescue, things

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