Home made mix....

[Hanlou]

I know the vast majority of hamster keepers on here feed Harry Hamster, but Herbert really doesn't seem to like a fair few of the ingredients.

The black things and the alfalfa pellets he even carried back upstairs the other day, leaving them in a handy pile for me to take away, cheeky boy.

I would like to have a go at making up my own mix if it's at all possible..... so what would everyone consider to be 'essential ingredients' in any hamster staple diet? I mean dry foods only here. (He gets a range of small portions of fresh foods regularly.)

Thanks.

[Nicolapompicola]

I use a good hamster mix as a base, and then add in things on the shunamite mix, like small peices of dried pasta, barley, split peas, lentils (basically a dry soup mix), and then you can add budgie seed and some cat/kitten food.

[Holly]

Mine always leave the black biscuit things in Harry Hamster and almost always leave the black pellets - I find feeding them dry mix every two days instead of every day helps them eat some of the bits they like less (some breeders feed dry mix only every 3 days but that seems a bit long to me).

There was a great thread on another forum about making your own mix - sadly it got lost when that forum crashed last summer.

(Sorry - just realised how unhelpful this post is ).

[I_am_plankton]

I use a good base mix, and then add: budgie seed, cat biscuits, crushed up dog biscuits, a fruit and fibre cereal or shreddies, porridge oats, P@H dried vegetables.

I quite like the idea of the pasta and lentils however, I might have to give that a go!

[Hanlou]

Thanks for the ideas! I definitely think I'm going to give it a go. I was reading the ingredients of HH today and I don't think it will be that hard to do tbh.

I'll use the HH I have as a base, but I think I'll look out for a different base when this lot's gone.

[agatecrystal]

he carried them away and left them in a pile to hoard it like a hamster does!