Has anyone ever made their own hamster food?

[chesca_27]

Hi cypher



I've made a first attempt at some hamster food using your information. It was so helpful ! Unfortunately, I don't know the percentages for protein, fat and fibre and should probably work those out .

Also, I hope you don't mind it was based heavily off your own mix, Cypher's Chinese Takeaway, with some extra ingredients. Please could you have a look at it? This is the link; https://www.mixerama.de/detail/index/sArticle/4792 If there is anything you think I should change, please let me know. I won't use this mix if you don't want me too since I did copy a lot of the measurements and ingredients.



Thank you so much for all your help so far. You really seem knowledgeable on this topic. I really appreciate it. I'm going to see whether I can order some of the treats you suggested.

Anyway, thanks again!

[chesca_27]

cypher, how did you calculate the percentages of each item? I'm trying to work out millet and everywhere says different things. Am I allowed to ask you for your list of nutritional information or the best websites to look at?

[cypher]

Of course I don't mind you basing some of your mix on mine, it's nice to see someone taking such an interest in making up a good healthy mix for their ham, it's not the easiest thing to do & we all need a starting point somewhere
Your mix looks nice & varied & I can't see any ingredients that shouldn't be there.

Working out the percentages took the longest, I can't even remember where I found them all but for more common foods it's not too hard if you Google "nutritional data for…. whatever!" some of the more obscure animal foods it's almost impossible to find.
I can't guarantee exactly how accurate my info on percentages is so it's probably better if you check it out yourself but I can give you some info on millet, I know it can be a bit confusing with a wide range of different data out there.
There are such a variety of millets I worked on an average of protein 11-14%, fat 4%, fibre 6-8%
There are a couple of links that you might find helpful for millet here & here.

If you read through the ingredients of some of the products on this page at zooplus you can find some useful nutritional info for herbs.
Natural Food Plants for Small Pets at zooplus

Overall percentages for the whole mix should be around 19% protein, 6% fat, & 8-9% fibre, as I said before keeping the fat levels down is the hardest bit, still working on that one, unless your ham will eat lots of herbs, it can help to add in more grains & less seeds, millet falls somewhere between the two really which is one reason a good variety of millet works so well.

If you're stuck on info for any particular ingredient I'll try to help if I can but as I said before some of it has to be a bit of an educated guess in the end!

[chesca_27]

Hi cypher

Firstly, thanks so much for the links and percentages. Finally doing my percentages for the food per 100g. Just wondering, will the percentages change if I'm only using say 10g of carrot instead of 100g. What method did you use to work it out? I've been looking up values for 100g and just writing them as percentages. Is this method right?

Anyway, thank you so much!

EDIT: Can't find grass seed anyway for nutrition. Same with clover seeds, bluegrass and wicken. Sorry if I'm driving you mad.

[Ella1900]

Originally Posted by Fluffagrams

Has anyone ever made their own hamster food?

It's something I've thought about a couple of times but need to do a bit of research so I know what I'm doing before I give it a go. Can anyone recommend a recipe or have any experiences that they'd be willing to share?

I have LOTS of different recipes that you can try( btw I try these all the time and they are totally safe) you can use a small of amount of baby food, all hamsters love this Syrian and dwarfs (Chinese too) it's really great with elderly hamsters because it's soft so they will eat it easily. Another one is scrambled egg. ( my hamster really loves this) it's good in protein so it's super healthy and your hamster will love it! (Again any hamster) there is a large variety of fruits and vegetables hamster can eat such as... Cucumber, carrot, Apple, grapes, celery, broccoli and that's just some of them! (Google it and you will be amazed of how much fruit and veggies they can eat) you should only give a tiny bit of fruit a week because it's high in sugar and hamsters are prone to diebeties. (Mostly dwarfs but Syrians have a chance too!) avoid all citrus fruits such as oranges or pineapple because they can cause sores in your hamsters mouth and all other kinds of problems. I hope this helps and have a nice day! X

[cypher]

I try to find the values per 100g which then makes it easy to work out the amount for however many grams you're using, grams per 100g is the percentage, if that makes sense.
I can't find grass seed either, as I said before the only grass seed I could find was canary seed which is very commonly found in ham food but the values varied so much I had to make a guess for grass!
Wicken is vetch if that helps.
Clover is difficult too, I can only really find info on sprouts which isn't that helpful.
There's no way you will find exact amounts for every seed, best you can do is find similar seeds that do have values available & try to work on an average.
It does take an awful lot of Googling!

[chesca_27]

Hi cypher

So I've worked out most of the nutrients so far, but I'm coming up with funny numbers like 4% protein. Do you know why?

Thanks

[cypher]

Even if you put lots of veg or herbs in the mix the protein would be way higher than that, it sounds like your maths has gone wrong somewhere so maybe try recalculating everything.

[Jenibelle]

@Cypher (or anyone who can help ^.^) - can you please help me with my percentages again? I've no idea how you guys are figuring them out!

I know my old mix was way too high in fat, so I'm trying to bring that content down.

For my block I use SunSeed Sunthing Special "Vita prima Sunscription" Critter Cube Formulated Diet.
Crude Protein: 22%
Crude Fat: 5.5%
Crude Fiber: 5%
Moisture: 12%
Calcium: .5-1%
Phosphorus: .58%
Vitamin A: 11,900 IU/kg
Vitamin D3: 1,400 IU/kg
Vitamin E: 60 IU/kg
Omega-3 Fatty Acids: .2%
DHA: .02%
Total Microorganisms: 30,000 CFU/g

And then I added...
Plain raw cashews, peanuts, dried banana chips, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, plain oats, rolled millet, buckwheat groats, hulled barley, pearled barley, and yellow popping corn.

(so I just added more oats, the buckwheat, the millet, 2 barleys and the corn - so there are many more of these ingredients right now over the others)

Probably 4 times every 2 weeks he also gets meal worms.

[cypher]

Figuring out the percentages is quite a lot of work!
Your base mix is a little high in protein, fat is ok but fibre is too low.
There is no way to know how that's being balanced out just by listing what you're adding though.
To get the percentages of his overall diet you have to weigh everything out so you know how much of the base & each individual addition he gets then (you have to know the percentages for the add ons) work out the percentages for the total mix including each additional ingredient if that makes sense.

To try & make it a bit clearer you work out the protein, fat & fibre for the number of grams of each ingredient add total protein, fat & fibre grams individually, then divide each by the number of grams in your total mix & times by a hundred to get your overall percentage.
I'm rubbish at maths lol! so if anyone thinks I got something wrong feel free to say so!

All I can say is you are adding in some foods which are higher in fibre so that's good, you're also adding some fairly high fat foods too but there's really no way to know exactly what he gets.