Feeding your Hamster

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Basic Menu Plan

(Dwarf hamsters need half as much as indicated)

How Often	What kind of food	What amounts
Daily	Grain Mixure	1/2 oz. (15 g)
	Greens	1 small handful
	Succulent foods	As desired (e.g., 1 slice apple, I floret broccoli
	Mealworms/Crickets	2-3
	Fresh drinking water	Unlimited
Every 2-3 days	Meat	1 tiny piece
	Yogurt	1 teaspoon
	Cottage cheese	1 teaspoon
	Meadow hay	1 small handful
Once a week	Twigs for gnawing	As needed
	Dog biscuit	1 piece

From the Book
As with any pet, good quality food and clean, fresh water must be provided at all times. The precise nutritional requirements of hamsters have not been fully determined. I

Seed Diets: The good and the Bad The pictures above are of 2 different hamster seed mixes. The line on the top is the most common, millet and sunflower seeds. The circle of sunflower seeds to the right of that line indicated the most unhealthy ingredient in this mix. Sunflower seeds should NOT be fed to hamsters except as occasional treats, they are incredibly fattening. Also, this seed mixure does not include the needed amounts of vitamins. The second seed mixure, though more expensive, is more complete. It includes dry vegetables, different seeds, and smaller amounts of sunflower seeds (if any). Hamsters LOVE pumpkin seeds probably the most out of this boquet of seeds. The pile of seeds to the right indicates the most unhealthy/useless types of seeds included. These are actually pellets that you would feed to guinea pigs or rabbits. Hamsters almost NEVER eat these.

n the wild, these animals feed on plants, seeds, fruit and insects. Current recommendations for feeding in captivity are pelleted rodent ration containing 15% - 20% protein. These rations are typically processed as dry blocks or pellets designed for rodents. Seed diets are also "formulated" and sold for hamsters, but these diets should only supplement the basic rodent pellet. Seed diets contain high levels of fat which can easily become rancid if improperly stored. In addition, when fed alone, these diets often lead to obesity and potential nutritional deficiencies, especially calcium. Other supplements to the diet may include sugarless breakfast cereals, whole wheat breads, pasta, cheese, cooked lean meats, fresh fruits and vegetables; all fed in moderation. Hamsters eat approximately 12 grams of food daily, and usually consume the majority of this at night. Hamsters are like little pack rats that often hoard their food in a corner of their cage, making it seem as though they eat a lot more than they really do.
Water is easily provided in water bottles equipped with sipper tubes. This method also helps keep the water free from contamination. Always make sure that the tubes are positioned low enough to allow the pet easy access. Juvenile hamsters need special consideration to make sure they are strong enough to use the sipper tube as well as reach it. The average hamster drinks approximately 10 ml of water per 100 grams body weight (average adult size). Although this amount is only a fraction of the total bottle volume, fresh water should be provided daily, not only when the bottle empties.

Experienced
It is very important never to immediately change your hamsters diet. This will upset them terribly and even make them sick, if you do want to change their diet, do it gradually over a period of weeks or months. Mix in a little more of the new food every time you change their food. There are a lot of food mixures out there on the market. Generally, hamsters tend to shy away from millet and rabbit pellets. When searching for the best kind of food, you want to look for the most varied kind of seed mixure for hamsters and/or girbles. The best kind I know of is from Kaytee called Fiesta diet mix for hamsters and girbles (see picture).
Hamsters can eat almost anything people can except alcohol, candy, and pickles. They need a balanced diet of the right foods to stay healthy, though. Hamsters can even eat rat/mouse lab blocks and dog biscuts (see pic) or other treats such as hay, dry dog/cat food, yogart drops, and hanging seed thingys (see pic). A hamster should be fed about a grape a day (not necessarily a grape, it could be lettuce or something, but this is just an example measurement). This is a good and needed source of protein, calcium, and other nutrients nobody cares about.. but if your hamster gets too many greens it could get wet tail. Baby hamsters love to scrabble around their nest searching for food, so cutting up pieces of lettuce and scattering it around their cage will make them very happy. Fresh water is very important, and crocks are out of the question. A plastic water bottle hung upside down with a metal tube and a ball for the hamster to push up is the best kind of water bottle. I once had glass water bottle in a cage with a rat when I went on vacation. It had a tube coming down from it (no little ball in the tube, though) and when I came back, I saw the broken remains of the water bottle shards hidden in the wet bedding.

Crickets and mealworms are a good source of protein for hamsters. After all, they are omnivores: like us. In the wild, hamsters eat insects whenever they find them. However, I would not suggest catching wild bugs for your hamster. All to often they have diseases or parasites that can make your hamster sick. I would suggest buying them from a petstore. They shouldn't be a problem as long as the crickets don't excape.

Hamster Diet F.A.Q.

> what food are hamsters more attracted to?

Hmm.. this could be considered somewhat of a rhetorical question, just the type of question I love.

Asking what type of food a hamster is more attracted to is like asking what kind of food humans are more attracted to. You see, hamsters vary in individual tastes as much as humans do. I will try to answer this question by using another, more indirect approach.

Hamsters, in general, like almost all kinds of food. They can eat anything from dog food, shrimp, pie, candy, brussel sprouts, strawberries, hay, chocolate, bugs, etc. And because of this adaptability to generally all the types of food we ourselves eat, common hamsters are able to live and thrive in a very harsh enviornment with scarce amounts of food: the desert.

Keep in mind, the friendly, domesticated Pet hamsters are an entirely different species from common hamsters, but they keep the same tastes in food. Individual hamsters may have different tastes, and these are for the hamsters owner to discover. Some hamsters may refuse to eat some kinds of food all throughout there lives that other hamsters love.

>What should I do if I find bugs in the hamster food?

This happens quite often. The solution is to put the food in the freezer to kill off the bugs. Then, either take the bugs out or include the dead bugs with the food - your hamster appreciates the protein. This can be prevented by keeping your food in an airtight container( see pic!) which you should do anyways, or buying a high-quaily type of hamster food which hasn't been infested.

>What do hamsters like to drink?

Water (make sure they have a good supply - tap water should do unless you have some strange nutrients in it), and, from an actual scientific journal found on the Internet:

Hamsters have an extraordinarily high liking and tolerance for alcohol. Their tolerance is equivalent to 40 times the human tolerance in proportion to body weight. As a result hamsters have been used successfully in trials of anti-alcoholism drugs by seeing if they were put off their preferred choice of a 15% alcohol solution when given the choice with plain water.

Scientists believe they have found ways to moderate "volitional drinking of alcohol" by hamsters. Tomato juice, chocolate drink, kudzu extract (Kevin Lauderdale tells me that Kudzu is a plant from the American South known for its incredible rate of growth - it can cover a VW Beatle overnight), and other fluids seem to suppress their alcoholic appetite.