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Old 09-17-2019, 04:22 AM  
AprilPearl
Hamster Hugger
 
Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: London
Posts: 2,327
Default Older hamster not eating his food

Hi all. Haven’t posted he’s in a while because since starting university things have been busy.

My hamster, Quigley, is now on the older side. He will be 2 years and 5 months old at the start of October. He’s still doing well - no balding or anything - although he sleeps more than he used to.

The one thing that’s worrying me is that lately he hasn’t been taking/eating much of his food (we feed him Harry Hamster). He gets either linseed or hemp sprinkled on his food every day and he will take that. He also takes the sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and peanuts in his mix (though I think he just stores most of those). And he will eat his veggies.

He started losing weight and I know that when a hamster isn’t eating their food you are meant to just leave it and eventually they will eat... But Quigley is old and I worry about doing that to him. So, we started feeding him a teaspoon of baby food every evening (a hamster safe variety). He’s still losing weight though and he’s now at 172g (he used to be about 205g). Because of this, I’ve started giving him a teaspoon of baby food in the morning with his breakfast too. So he is now getting two teaspoons of babyfood a day (and I suspect is living pretty much solely off that).

I’m a bit worried because obviously it’s not great for him to live on babyfood alone - he won’t get all the nutrients he needs that way and presumably it’s not good for his teeth. But like I said, at his age I worry about him losing any more weight. (Also our 15 year old cat just passed away from liver problems, one of the symptoms of which was that she dropped from 4kg to 1.6kg so I am extra sensitive to his weight loss)

Any suggestions?
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Over the Rainbow:
Alfie, Kevin, Pip, Jordy, Scamp, Sooty, Mushu, Quigley
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