Hamster food and moths

[Fluffagrams]

Originally Posted by Vectis Hamstery

Dog biscuits should also be kept in airtight tubs for that reason! When I was show manager I had 10kg of the club's dog biscuits which I'd thankfully divided into smaller 1kg tied bags from the large 10kg one. One small bag got horribly infested with weevils and had to be thrown out - though the other 9kg survived as it was in different bags.

It was lucky that most of your supply survived.

It's silly I'd always kept the things like the dog biscuits in an airtight tub as I didn't want them to attract pests but I wasn't sensible enough to think the put the spare food in one. I've learnt my lesson now though.

Originally Posted by Vectis Hamstery

I have an ongoing war with Indian meal moths that came in with several orders of straight seeds. It's been hard to get rid of them as I can't physically clean all my cages and everything else in one go! I have specific pheremone traps for Indian meal moths which work wonders.

I wonder if you can get something like that for weevils? I'll have to have a look.

[Hamsterita]

I also suffered a plague, but in my case they were worms.

I didn't know that things like that could happen. I had bought Hazel Hamster Mix and I kept it on a container, but I grabbed the bites that my ham liked the most to hand feed him while he was on the playpen or playing on my bed, so I left the food that I had picked on the floor or over my bed.

One day when I was making my bed I found a worm. It was disgusting. My ham had arrived at my home a couple of weeks ago so I thought that the worm being there might be hamster related, but I didn't want to believe that and I ended up thinking that it was a disgusting coincidence.

The problem is that two days later I was grabbing the hamster mix bag from the container and suddenly I realized that I had a bunch of worms crawling over my pyjamas. It gave me the creeps. I cleaned my pyjamas and I realized that the worms were coming from the food bag. The container was full of worms. I don't know how I couldn't see them before. I throw it to the bin inmediately and I started to clean everything. I vacuum several times. I look on the internet what could they be, and I read that they were pantry worms. I was sooo disgusted. I couldn't sleep that night, and I barely slept the night before. I was paranoid, feeling things crawling over me.

Thank god I hadn't seen worms again in my bedroom. I think that the plague was contained. I've bought again Hazel Hamster mix a couple of days ago, but it's in the freeze hoping that it get rid of undesirable eggs, bugs or whatever.

I attach pictures of my worms if anyone is interested.

[souffle]

Hamsterita those are not worms - they are the larvae of the Meal moth. They eat the grain then pupate and hatch in to the meal moths. Hopefully you got rid of them contained in that food. If you look up meal moth larvae you will see pics that look just like yours!

[Vectis Hamstery]

I agree with Souffle - I'm familiar with these little wrigglers! I hope you've managed to sort your problem.

[Hamsterita]

Yep, that's what I wanted to say. Sorry for the misapprehension. Anyway, disgusting and creepy crawlers, thank god that they didn't hatch iugghhh I shiver every time that I remember the larvae on my bed

Soooo, I hope that the freezer really solves this kind of problems and never see bugs on my hammie food again.

[Pebbles82]

Lock and lock boxes are good I spent a small fortune on them - after researching which were the best airtight ones (apparently they're better than tupperware).

I shall have to keep my eye on things too as no freezer at present.

[flowerfairy]

All my latest food has gone into the freezer. I use clippy boxes too. Great invention.

[Nancy's Hamsters]

Must be something to do with environment being super for weevils as I had a air tight sealed container of cube food which weevils were found in , and then a bag of my home mixed seed mix (which uses a large bag of Higgins Garden Harvest) found Moth larva in the Higgins bag unused in the home mix which had started building their silk which destroyed that whole bag which was left When I had larva during my dwarf hamster days the pups would gobble up the larva like candy if they found it, but Syrians just ignore them. Luckily the store I bought the the infested bag from refunded my money as they had more then just me complain about the moth larva. I purchase too large and amount of food to be able to freeze it and some untreated( I use organic grains with no chemicals used to preserve them) grains in my home mix actually fair poorly in completely air sealed containers. So I have to store my seed mix supply in a colder temperature room which at this time of year is cold enough to slow hatching of the eggs. In warm weather I just buy less more often so it can be stored in the freezer on the lower shelf.

[AprilPearl]

Can't believe I didn't know about this before. If there are unhatched moth eggs in hamster food, will it harm the hamster to eat them? It worries me that they cannot be seen.

Also, this is probably a douche question, but is freezing hamster food definitely safe? It won't deplete its nutritional value or make it all soggy, will it? I use Harry Hamster food.

[cypher]

The eggs won't hurt a ham at all, just a bit of extra protein!
Freezing ham food is fine, I freeze all mine & keep most of it in the freezer just taking out enough to last me few weeks at a time usually.
The most important thing is just to keep it air tight both in the freezer & when defrosting so it doesn't get damp at all.