Throwing or covering food?

[Caboose]

Hello everyone. So my little one has began do stuff she has never done before. This began happening ever since I have switched her to the food Higgins Sunburst Gourmet Food Mix. She will either throw lots of the food out of her bowl just to eat certain things or she will completely cover her food with lots of the bedding. What causes this behavior? She's never done it until I changed her food. Should I also be worried that she's not eating everything with that food and only picks and chooses?

[cypher]

What were you feeding before, was it very different?
If it's a big change then it can take them some time to adjust & switching foods should be done gradually.
Covering the bowl with substrate is quite normal behaviour for a lot of hams, they will some times do just as they dig around the cage but also do it to hide & protect the food in the bowl!
It may be that she's not so keen though if she throws stuff out & doesn't eat it all.
The normal way to deal with picky eating if she doesn't eat all her mix is just plain tough love but I don't think that's an ideal mix so maybe try something else?
That mix has a lot of fruit & sugar for a ham really, those fruits aren't natural foods for them & are both sweet & acidic so not ideal in a mix.
The vita garden (http://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/small-animal/higgins-vita-garden-hamster-and-gerbil-food) is probably a better choice overall.
Both are quite low in protein though & would need a little supplementing.

[Caboose]

Really? It's a bad food? I was told that's the best food I could buy in the US for her =/. That's why I switched in the first place. She was currently eating Oxbow Essentials Healthy Handfuls Hamster & Gerbil Food. How would you give her tough love? Just leave the food in there until she eats everything?

[AmityvilleHams]

It's not a bad food,it just isn't enough protein on its own.Mixing Mazuri Rat and Mouse lab blocks with it would boost the protein and make it suitable,along with just leaving the mix there until it is eaten.

[CMB]

You could switch back to the food she had before if it was preferred by your hamster.

[cypher]

If she was happy on the food she had before then I think you'd be fine going back to that, it doesn't have a huge range of ingredients but what it does have is more natural for a ham to eat.
I'm not saying her new food is all bad but I don't get the reasoning behind putting things like papaya & pineapple in hamster food tbh, those foods are quite good for humans as they can help us digest proteins but hams don't have an acidic stomach so to me at least they seem contraindicated. There also apple & raisin so overall that's a lot of fruit for an animal that never comes across fruit in the wild!
Tough love does mean just that, give enough food for a few days & no more until it's all gone.