Rescue Hamster - really obese

[Mom]

Hi. We have rescued a hamster from the well-meaning hands of a rescue organization that doesn't know much about dwarf hamsters. He is 66 grams, we can't feel his ribs, and he can barely heave himself on his wheel for three to four seconds. He's been "pampered" and fed high-fat high-protein snacks way more than he should have been.

We are looking for a good vet in our area and will get him into see them ASAP. In the meantime, we need to start getting that weight off the little guy before he has a heart-attack or his kidneys fail. He does have the "peeing too much protein" pee smell aready, but we are hoping that will rectify itself when he's got nothing to eat but his low-cal hamster chow. He has access to plenty of water and a wheel. I am hoping that as he has less food he will begin to shed some weight and feel better about running in the wheel. Right now he cannot heave himself up the ramp in his cage!

In the meantime, can anyone suggest anything else we can be doing? We don't want to stress him too much - he's just come home in the last 24 hours - and we are encouraging him to explore his large new cage (he had been kept in a small fish tank all his life, apparently). Ideas?

[cypher]

66g isn’t what I’d consiider obese for a Russian hybrid more like average although they do vary a lot in weight & some can be a fair bit less or even more.
I wouldn’t cut his food back too much as it’s important he gets all the nutrients he needs, it’s always better to encourage more activity, so plenty of enrichment in the cage to keep him busy, scatter feeding & time out of the cage with lots of things to explore.
What are you planning on feeding him? I know it’s hard to get a goof mix for a dwarf in the US.

[Ria P]

I had a 68g Russian dwarf who wasn't overweight.
Dwarfs shouldn't have sugary snacks, honey based nibble sticks or fruit because they're prone to diabetes but they need enough of a good hamster mix to eat and to keep a hoard. A hoard is important to them to keep them happy so i would be careful with a diet and make sure that he gets fresh greens as well.

Could it be that he doesn't know how to use a wheel? I actually had to teach a dwarf how to use a wheel once. You could also replace the ramp with a bendy bridge for now.

Like cypher, i would also recommend exercise.
Could you hamster proof a room to let him free roam? My dwarfs all have an upright wheel and a flying saucer and one of them prefers the flying saucer. You could add one as an additional wheel to see if he'd use that more.

[Shannonmcn]

My wee dwarf took a good while to figure out his upright wheel as well, he was used to a saucer, but once he got the hang of it he was flying.

I would agree that I wouldn't cut back on the amount of proper food he's getting (is this a specific mix or do you mean low-cal as in... just what he needs and not a treat?). Cutting back on the high fat treats you say he's been getting and having a larger space to explore will probably do wonders for his weight and fitness without needing to change anything else. You don't really want them to lose weight too fast either!

[Mom]

Hi All. Thanks for the responses. I will be happier once a Vet has looked him over (hopefully very soon).

We cannot feel his ribs at all. It's like holding a completely squishy hamster. We've had dwarf hamsters before and know about the loose skin, etc., but we've always been able to feel their bones. They were feeding him sugary treats and dried fish flakes in excess. They also gave us his other treats, which seem to be some sort of cookies and something that resembles sugar cubes. I've thrown the cookies and sugary stuff away. A bottle of seeds mixed with looks like dried mealworms was also with the hamster when he arrived, too - that seems like way too much protein to me. And another bottle of dried mealworms, as well as a full bag of seed mix.

This morning he had a leaf of fresh cilantro as a treat (a very small leaf). I also have fresh growing basil, mint, and parsley in the house and need to check to see if those are ok to give him (I think so). He'll get them in very tiny quantities for a treat, if so. We bought him "Oxbow Garden Select" pelleted feed and will cut his seed mixture with some of that, slowly. The Oxbow seems to have a high proportion of timothy hay and was the lowest-fat and protein mix on the shelf. The Oxbow is:

Guaranteed Analysis

Crude Protein (min) 16.00%
Crude Fat (min) 2.50%
Crude Fiber (min) 18.00%
Crude Fiber (max) 23.00%
Moisture (max) 10.00%
Calcium (min) 0.80%
Calcium (max) 1.30%
Phosphorus (min) 0.50%
Vitamin A (min) 10,000 IU/kg
Vitamin D3 (min) 900 IU/kg
Vitamin E (min) 190 IU/kg

I was not familiar with Oxbow but we had a few people recommend it and it seemed like a good thing to mix in with the other food we were given for him to try to wean him down from all that fat.

He went in the wheel and ran - or walked, really - for maybe five seconds, then turned around and walked in the other direction for the same time. That was after we picked him up and put him on the top shelf of the cage where the wheel access is. We've put his food dish up there, too, so that he will be encouraged to walk up the ramp to get to it. He has a stash set up already - when we put him up by the wheel he went straight for the food dish, got in, and stuffed his pouches. We will sprinkle a bit of food around in the bedding for him to find.

I guess it could also be that he has no muscle tone to speak of if he's been kept in a really small space all his life? He is currently in a Kaytee CritterTrail Super Habitat for Small Animals because it was the one with the largest footprint I could find (540 sq inches) that had good high sides and really narrow bar spacing. If he doesn't seem to use the existing wheel after a couple of weeks we'll get him a flying saucer wheel to try. We do plan to let him roam (supervised) on the living-room floor - we'll be setting a blanket out and putting some tubes/toys/chewies/boxes out and letting him walk around as we wants to. I have the distinct impression that the only times he's been out of a cage recently was to be hand-held, so he's not had much exercise.

I do plan to do all of this very slowly, of course, to minimize the shock to his system (so to speak). The poor little thing has been through at least three homes in a month, so he needs some time to get settled in. Again, I'll feel better after he's been seen by a Vet. Hopefully he has no unseen injuries or other problems. But until then I'll definitely take all your advice into mind. Thanks!

[AmityvilleHams]

Oxbow really isn't a good brand when it comes to hamster food. They may do very well for other pet foods but just not hamsters - timothy hay being a significant portion of the pellets makes it an inappropriate food from a nutrition perspective and pelleted diets as a whole are very unsuitable to the natural behaviors of hamsters who really need a proper mixed diet.

The proper diet in the US would be Higgins Vita Garden with added flax seed and Pure Bites freeze dried meat(avoid giving duck too often mostly due to fat content - shrimp, chicken, and turkey are some very good options for Pure Bites).

What wheel are you using at the moment? The Silent Spinners in particular are known to often not spin well or eventually stop spinning and any wheel of that sort of design has a safety flaw caused by the way the two pieces of plastic connect together for the wheel surface(essentially they can come apart and give a very serious injury risk - many do have a small gap regardless which is also dangerous since that can catch toenails and rip them out).

Comfort Wheels are a good pet store option as long as they're properly sized - the 8.5 inch version is appropriate for dwarf hamsters. The 9 inch Silent Runner is also a very good wheel but that has to be ordered online. I would strongly recommend against flying saucer type wheels though - they don't allow a natural running position unlike a properly sized upright wheel and as such do not replace a proper upright wheel!

[Shannonmcn]

I'm not an expert on food available in the US but Oxbow rings alarm bells, you're correct it is usually hay based (as that's their specialty) and I think the Healthy Handfuls is not suitable for omnivorous hamsters despite being marketed that way. I don't know if they have improved things with the Garden Select. Where was it you got the recommendation from?

Probably bad form to recommend posts on a different forum but Hamster Hideout has a very handy food thread you could check out. See if you can find one of the food mixes on their Recommended list. The Oxbow you're using doesn't seem to be on there.

Fat isn't bad though, they do need fat in their diets. 2.5% in the Oxbow is very very low. Hard to say if he needs more or less without knowing what's in that seed mix tbh. Trying to mess with his diet without knowing exactly what it is you're feeding is a minefield.

[Mom]

Hi. Thanks for all your replies.

The Oxbow is to mix with the food he's been eating, not to give him as a sole feed. We picked it specifically because of the nutrition content it has and because someone we know at another rescue org recommended it as a supplement to his feed until he's a little less pudgy. The original owner and later the people who took him in temporarily had him on dried fish (I saw the woman give him the equivalent of a teaspoon of it at one go, as he would do cute tricks for it), and she said they did that quite often. And the freeze-dried mealworms. There is a bottle here of something labeled "Herbage Show Freeze Dried Feast" but the contents do not look like what's on the label so I think it's a repurposed jar. Most of the label is in what looks like Chinese - it doesn't come up on Google. The jar contains a mix of what I think initially came in the jar plus mealworms (maybe 1/2) and mixed grains (the other half). I do see dried corn in there, which I was told by a breeder once was not good for them. (?) The main bag of food that came with him was "Vita Prima Complete Nutrition Dwarf Hamster Food." The plan is to sub some of the Oxbow in with the seeds, and portion out the mealworms so that he gets the equivalent of about a tablespoon a month of them. And the occasional small bit of fresh herbs/freeze-dried veg. Eventually we would like to get him onto a "complete" mix - it looks like I can get Higgins Vita Garden Hamster & Gerbil Food delivered to us by Amazon in a week or two - with the fresh herbs/veg remaining as treats. (Thanks for the link to the list of foods, that was very helpful.)

He came out to greet us a while ago and had some floor time. We just put his little sleeping box out with him so when he had enough "out" time he could just go back into it. Which, after a bit, he did. He seemed to be alert and enjoying himself. My daughter said she got up in the middle of the might and found him walking very slowly in the wheel, so that's good. At least he's moving around. It looks like he made several nests in the bedding of his cage, as well, overnight.

I have phoned a half-dozen vets, and the ones that take small animals (pocket pets) don't have an opening until January. The one closest to us is not taking new "pocket" animal clients at all. I did get one that said if we had an emergency situation to phone them and they'd try to work with us, though. So that's at least a little positive. I don't guess I'll be getting him in to a Vet any time soon.

Also, the "protein funk" he had when he first got here seems to be greatly lessened. It's not his bedding, it him. And it's not that we've gotten used to it, as I was out back for a bit and then came back in and handled him. I really do wish I could get a vet to see him sooner.

[Mom]

So to double check, the first set of ingredients, below, is the Oxbow and the second is the Higgins I can get from Amazon. I'd missed the molasses in the Oxbow, but as it's a good source of iron and trace elements I can excuse whatever sugar content it has. They both look like they have significant "grasses" in their content. And it looks like the Oxbow has a bit more protein than the Higgins. (We were trying to get that down just a bit in the supplement, too, if he was going to keep getting mealworms.) Oh, well...

Oxbow
Timothy Grass, Oat Groats, Linseed Meal, Sunflower meal, Whole Barley, Oat Grass, Orchard Grass, Cane Molasses,* Canola Oil, Whole Yellow Pea, Sodium Bentonite, Flaxseed, Lignin Sulfonate, Calcium Carbonate, Salt, Yeast Culture (dehydrated), Banana Powder, Carrot Powder, Hydrolyzed Yeast, Inulin, Mixed Tocopherols (preservative), Spinach Powder, Tomato Powder, L-Ascorbyl-2-Monophosphate (Vitamin C), Monocalcium Phosphate, Choline Chloride, Vitamin E Supplement, Zinc Sulfate, Zinc Proteinate, Niacin, Copper Sulfate, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Vitamin A Supplement, Manganous Oxide, Riboflavin Supplement, Biotin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Magnesium Sulfate, Copper Proteinate, Sodium Selenite, Manganese Proteinate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Folic Acid, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Cobalt Carbonate, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Calcium Iodate, Rosemary Extract

Guaranteed Analysis

Crude Protein (min) 16.00%
Crude Fat (min) 2.50%
Crude Fiber (min) 18.00%
Crude Fiber (max) 23.00%
Moisture (max) 10.00%
Calcium (min) 0.80%
Calcium (max) 1.30%
Phosphorus (min) 0.50%
Vitamin A (min) 10,000 IU/kg
Vitamin D3 (min) 900 IU/kg
Vitamin E (min) 190 IU/kg


Higgins
White Millet, Wheat, Red Milo, Corn, Oats, Sun-Cured Timothy Hay, Sunflower Seeds, Sun-Cured Alfalfa Meal, Flaked Beans, Flaked Peas, Peanuts, Yellow Peas, Soybean Hulls, Dried Beet Pulp (sugar removed), Soybean Meal, Dicalcium Phosphate, Flaxseed, Salt, Dried Enterococcus Faecium Fermentation Product, Dried Lactobacillus Acidophilus Fermentation Product, Dried Lactobacillus Casei Fermentation Product, Algae Meal, Soybean Oil, Hemicellulose Extract, DL-Methionine, L-Lysine, Choline Chloride, Mixed Tocopherols (preservative), Potassium Chloride, Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Vitamin E Supplement, Zinc Sulfate, Ferrous Sulfate, Niacin, Folic Acid, Biotin, Manganese Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Calcium Pantothenate, Thiamine Mononitrate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin Supplement, Zinc Proteinate, Manganese Proteinate, Copper Proteinate, Calcium Iodate, Yucca Schidigera Extract, Sodium Selenite, Cobalt Carbonate, Vitamin B12 Supplement.

Crude Protein - Min. 15.0%
Crude Fat - Min. 6.5%
Crude Fiber - Max. 11.0%
Moisture - Max. 11.0%
Vitamin A - Min. 8,000 IU/kg
Omega-3 Fatty Acids - Min. 0.40%
Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA) - Min. 0.03%
Total Lactic Acid Bacteria - Min. 2 x 105 cfu/g

For light reading, this is interesting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK231928/[URL="http://https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK231928/"]

[Ria P]

Originally Posted by AmityvilleHams

I would strongly recommend against flying saucer type wheels though - they don't allow a natural running position unlike a properly sized upright wheel and as such do not replace a proper upright wheel!

I didn't suggest to replace an upright wheel with a flying saucer but to add one as an additional wheel to give a hamster a choice.
I don't think that they run in an unnatural position either but like with many things, opinions vary.