For owners of diabetic hamsters who want to treat them with diet and fenugreek I'd really recommend making your own mix. I discussed the ingredient list of some commercial mixes in
this thread and the ingredients of Hazel Hamster in
post no 8 of that same thread.
The ingredient list of the oxbow reads as follows:
Timothy Meal, Pearled Barley (Rolled), Oat Groats, Linseed (Flax) Meal, Canola Meal, Wheat Gluten, Millet, Ground Flax Seed, Canola Oil, Limestone, Salt, Dried Yeast Culture (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), Vitamin E Supplement, Choline Chloride, Zinc Proteinate, Zinc Sulfate, Ferrous Sulfate, Niacin, Copper Sulfate, Selenium Yeast, Vitamin A Supplement, Folic Acid, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Copper Proteinate, Riboflavin Supplement, Manganese Proteinate, Biotin, Manganous Oxide, Thiamine Mononitrate, Magnesium Sulfate, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Sodium Selenite, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Cobalt Carbonate, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Calcium Iodate, Mixed Tocopherols, Rosemary Extract
If you look at the pic of the packet, you'll see that the food consists of pellets - the ingredients are ground to meal and then pressed together to form the pellets. I gave a discussion why pellets are not desirable in the thread I linked - pellets are produced using heat and lots of pressure which destroys many (most) vitamins. This is also the reason there are so many vitamin supplements on the ingredient list - because the actual ingredients were processed to death so they _have to_ add vitamins back in artificially. Contrary to what most people believe artificially added vitamins are NOT a sign of a good feed (or human food either)! A really good feed from many unprocessed, natural sources does not need added vitamins. Whenever it says "vitamin so-and-so supplement" or "fortified" on a box it means that the food itself is so over-processed or unbalanced that the company had to add in vitamins or minerals artificially to make it at all usable.
Now if you think so what, they did add the vitamins back in so they're there anyway then think again - 1) not all vitamins are added back in (some are way to expensive) and 2) many vitamins only work as a group or need other ingredients in a natural food for the body to be able to process them well. Many of these relationships are not even fully understood yet. Therefore, eating unprocessed food is always better than eating something that was processed to death and then adding supplements.
Also, grinding stuff basically turns slow carbs into faster carbs because it mechanically "opens up" those carbs. You do NOT want to feed a diabetic fast carbs. You want your carbs as slow as possible because that's what prevents sugar spikes in their bloodstream.
The only good thing I can say about this feed is that it does not contain any added sugars or molasses but there is salt - which should not be in there, everything is highly processed and there is zero animal protein! Esp. for diabetics you want them to have a high protein diet and dwarfs should have quite a high amount of animal protein in any case. Marketing something as a feed for hamsters (which usually means syrians) and gerbils sounds completely strange to me, too - syrians have completely different needs than gerbils. "Dwarf hamster and gerbil food" I would understand - but with this ingredient list that food is not suitable for either, IMO.
Also, if you count those ingredients which are not totally artificial you see that there is not a lot of variety in the feed:
timothy meal
rolled barley
oat groats
linseed meal + ground flax seed = both flax
canola meal + canola oil
wheat gluten
millet
that's only 7 different things and they are all processed into pellets.
What you should have instead is at least a dozen unprocessed things - for dwarfs mostly small seeds like millet, grass seeds, amaranth, sesame seed, canary seed, etc some bigger grains like durra/milo, buckwheat, oats, mung beans, etc plus some sources of animal protein - preferrable also a low fat one like dried grasshoppers/crickets and not just high fat protein like meal worms and then some herbs and dried flowers to round it off like dried dandelion or daisys.
I make my own mix according to this rule and it looks like this:
pic 1,
pic 2,
pic 3 (including descriptions)
I have yet to see an ingredient list of a commercial US food that I'd feed to my dwarfs or to diabetic dwarfs at that. I actually think one of the main reasons I see so many cases of what appears to be type 2 diabetes on forums with US dwarf owners on is the commercially available feeds in the US. If you want to feed your dwarfs well look into mixing your own feed. It does not have to be perfect, as long as it's not completely out of whack (eg. extremely high in fat) almost anything you could mix together would be better than what I've seen on the ingredient lists of commercial feeds.
A recipe to get you started could look like this (this is translated from
http://www.diebrain....ter.html#Rezept , one of the largest German sites about rodents):
- 500 grams budgie mix or small seed mix - if you use a budgie mix make sure it contains seeds only (many bird mixes will contain oyster shell or other such stuff, sometimes called "activity pearls"). Get a mix intended for germination/seed sprouting to be on the safe side
- 100 grams mix of bigger grains - you can find those at health food shops / organic supermarkets
- 200 grams grass seeds for animal consumption (make sure there is no fertilizer mixed in! ready-to-sow grass seeds usually contain fertilizer) - if you can get them. If you can't add more small seed mix
- 200 grams animal protein - meal worms, grasshoppers, bombyx morii larvae...
- 350 grams herbs and flower mix - if you can get them. If not provide a herb hay in your cage; eg timothy hay
You should be able to find at least an appropriate bird mix, some grains, meal worms and timothy hay. A mix made from that would be so much better than the commercial dwarf hamster mixes you can get in the US even if it is not perfect.
If you are in the UK, you might want to check out Silver's mixes available on RatRations.com:
http://www.ratration...asic-p-930.html if mixing yourself is too much hassle.
If anyone knows of a similar shop in the US please let me know - I'd really love to have something to point people to. People ask me for a good dwarf mix in the US all the time and I have nothing I can point them to. Also, if you can give a brand name for a commercial bugie mix with seeds only I'd appreciate it. Over here in the EU I'd recommend JR Farm's
JR Birds Germination Seeds for Budgerigars but I don't think that's available in the US.
