Quote:
Originally Posted by AmityvilleHams
Nutrition can make a big difference in fur quality and just overall skin & coat health. As for vitamin drops, I would definitely not be doing those. Your base diet would cover everything needed if it's a good diet and adding too much excess vitamins can be extremely harmful.
Flax seed oil is the only good idea you've gotten from a vet, but you can just give regular flax seeds which will have an added bonus of being more enriching than just giving oil with more nutrients etc too.
Definitely don't use the dry shampoo. As for mite treatment, you really shouldn't ever use any sort of treatment like that on hamsters without a proper diagnosis which includes a skin scrape. Unfortunately a lot of vets seem to skip past that with hamsters but the treatments can be incredibly hard on their bodies & immune systems even to the point of toxicity, so understandably they should only ever be used with proper diagnosis when absolutely necessary.
Hopefully others can help add more ideas for extras to give for skin & coat health, but adding whole flax seed is a good start!
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Hi, thanks a lot for your reply. I read quite a lot about his food and give him a mix of the following: Getzoo's basic hamster food + Vitakraft Syrian hamster mix + Science selective pellets. I also give him half a teaspoon of unflavoured and unsalted tofu every second day. Plus, he gets pieces of fresh veggies (hamster safe ones) once every two days. I also feed him pumpkin seeds, hazelnuts, pecan nuts, walnuts, from time to time (not a lot). When I rescued him he was in a pretty bad shape and hence his doctor recommended a drop of multivitamins for 3 weeks at a stretch (once per day for the first week and once every two days for the next two), stop for 3 weeks and repeat. I also give him an eighth of a teaspoon of nutritional yeast mixed with his food, once a week.
I didn't give him the dry shampoo even though his doctor prescribed it. I will add some flax seeds in his mix from now.
As for the treatment, I was also very unsure and hence asked it in the board first.
I was reading a few other hamster boards recommending applying a drop or two of cold pressed olive oil over their dry skin. Do you think it may be an acceptable temporary solution?
Once again, thank you very much for your help.