I. The severity of picky eating by hamsters
1 , mildly picky eaters
If the hamster is only mildly picky eaters, then it should be acceptable to most of the rat food. Generally, it is only picky about one or two kinds of raw materials, but it is not necessary to not eat it. It will eat when there is nothing else to eat when it is hungry.
2. Moderately picky eaters
Moderately picky hamsters are picky about some of the ingredients in the comprehensive rat diet. Eat what you eat, and don’t eat what you don’t like.
3. Severe picky eaters
In the case of severe picky eaters, hamsters do not like most of the ingredients in the comprehensive rat food, and they usually only eat their favorite food. , generally eat the germ in some food. For other things, there is very little active ingestion.
2. Harm of picky eating in hamsters
1. Malnutrition
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Hamsters who are picky eaters always eat certain types of comprehensive food. In this case, the intake of nutrients is relatively simple, and it will easily lead to malnutrition over time. If hamsters usually eat less of those fixed types of nutrients, they will be malnourished even faster.
2. Too long teeth
Most of the picky eaters prefer to eat soft food, but hamsters need to grind their teeth. Eating soft food for a long time will lead to their Insufficient grinding of teeth, slowly causing the teeth to grow longer and longer. Hamster teeth that are too long can seriously affect their eating and even cause facial diseases.
3. Disease-causing hamsters who are picky eaters have different preferences, for example, they only like to eat dried fruits in the food. Most hamsters prefer to eat dried fruit, but due to the high sugar content of dried fruit, if you eat too much, it is easy to cause diabetes. Hamsters are very prone to diabetes, and diabetes is one of the main causes of death in hamsters. In addition to diabetes, picky eating in hamsters may also lead to other diseases.
Three, what to do if hamsters are picky eaters
1. How many meals for hungry hamsters
For those hamsters who are seriously picky eaters, it can be appropriate to adopt the method of “starvation treatment”, and only provide it with food that it does not like to eat. Hamsters generally accept food they don’t like when they are hungry. After maintaining this way of eating for a period of time, the hamster will gradually not reject the food that it did not like before, and slowly get rid of the bad habit of being picky eaters. However, this method only works for healthy hamsters. If the hamster’s physique is very weak, in the state of starvation, it is very likely to get sick from starvation, so the gains outweigh the losses. In addition, if the hamster is pregnant or breastfeeding, it is not suitable for them to use this method, you can wait until they have passed this period before considering.
2. Change to synthetic food to feed
If the hamster eats comprehensive food, you can try to replace it with synthetic food to feed them. Each grain of synthetic food is the same, and the nutrition Balanced, hamsters can’t be picky eaters when they eat such food. Or you can gradually replace the hamster’s main food, and use the new and old mouse food to transition in proportion. If the hamster can accept the new mouse food, then you can gradually replace all the new mouse food.
Tips:
Hamsters will easily get tired of the rat food if they eat a single ingredient for a long time. It is recommended that the owner try to use a variety of rat food mixtures for regular feeding. , you can occasionally feed them some hamster-specific snacks and nutritional products, so that the hamster retains the “freshness” and prevents the hamster from being picky eaters.
