Pre-made foods close-up

[deguconvert]

Hi all!!

We are going to look at the premade foods that are available on the market and see what we can do to unravel their ingredients and determine if they have real value for our degus. This is NOT to undermine the natural nutrition that is a high value to the forum . . . but is for the purpose of working to be as informed about these products as we can be . . . so that we are able to advise wisely any owners that are facing limitations in their choices for degu food/feeding. Foods can be accurately categorized as good, mediocre, or poor.

So . . . can you please list any premade foods that you use here? If we can have their names, we can then look up their ingredients and work from there. If you know of several premade food brands, please feel free to list them all.

Thank you! ;D

Edit: It is also suggested that knowing what is available in different countries will be helpful, so if you can include your country of origin when you post your foods, it will be much appreciated.

[listracian]

I have been using Science Selective Degu and have also used gerty Guinea pig food in the past

I will write up ingredients later when I have the packaging near by! I don't have the ingredients for Gerty though.

[Deleted]

While my girls have a 50% natural diet, I have been using the Versele-Laga Degu Nature nugget mix.
They love some of the pieces, but leave the orange and red ones. Here is the ingredient list as it appears on the package:

VERSELE-LAGA Degu nature

INGREDIENTS:
Derivatives of vegetable origin
Vegetables (min. 11,5% of which 36% carrots, 5% Jerusalem artichoke and 6% parsnip)
Vegetable protein extracts
Minerals
Seeds (min. 1% of which 91% linseed)
Yeast
FOS (??Fructooligosaccharide??)
Herbs
Marigold extract
Marigold
Algae
Yucca-extract
MOS (??Mannan-oligosaccharide based nutritional supplements??)
Grape seed extract

CONTENTS: 14% crude protein, 3,5% crude fat, 15% crude fibre, 6% crude ash,
0,80% calcium, 0,55% phosphorus, 0,62% lysine, 0,23% methionine

ADDITIVES/kg: 12000 I.U. vitamin A, 1500 I.U. vitamin D3, 40mg vitamin E, 85mg vitamin C,
11mg copper-cupric (II) sulfate.

[butters]

Beaphar Xtra Vital Degu
Beaphar Care Degu
JR Farm Degu Special
JR Farm Degu grainless
JR Farm Degu Premium
Vitakraft Emotion Beauty
Vitakraft Menu Vital
Vitakraft VitaVerde Nature
Multifit Degu
Supreme Science Selective Degu
Versele-Laga Degu Nature
Activa Degu Futter Natur
Bunny degutraum

This is what i've tried (actualy my degus did) in the past years (and even some more)
I made pictures from almost all of those.

Like this:

[moletteuk]

Butters, that's a massive list of food you/they (lol) have tried! I think your photos speak volumes and are very valuable information, very interesting to compare the listed ingredients in their relative volumes and then to see what those proportions look like. I think it would be a great resource if you would be willing to post the 3 photos of each mix just like you have just done for Multifit. It would be brilliant if you could also post your impressions of each food, whether your degus liked it, whether they fed selectively, how much it cost, anything else of note.

[listracian]

Selective Degu with broccoli & basil - www.supremepetfoods.com/product/science-selective-degu/

Alfalfa
Barley
Wheat flour
Wheatfeed
Peas
Soybean meal
Broccoli (min 4%)
oats
Soy oil
minerals
spinach
basil (min 1%)
salt

Vit A - 15,000 IU/kg
Vit C - 500 IU/kg
Vit D3 - 1,400 IU/kg
Vit E - 50 mg/kg
Copper - 10 mg/kg
Iron - 50 mg/kg
Iodine - 0.40 mg/kg
Manganese - 30 mg/kg
Zinc - 50 mg/kg
Selenium - 0.10 mg/kg

Crude Protein - 16.0%
Crude Fibre - 10.0%
Crude oils and fats - 4.0%
Crude ash - 8.0%

May contain traces of nuts.

[moletteuk]

Perhaps as part of a basic diet sheet, we should state which (main diet) feeds we unreservedly recommend, and then a second list of which feeds we recommend with reservations and then state the reservations.

Perhaps we could then compile more detailed info with the end user in mind, things like I have asked Butters about - selective feeding, appeal to degu, cost, and then a simple rating for nutritional content, and any specific comments (eg watch out for the 2 versions of xtravital).

[fred]

Feb 28, 2012 18:35:36 GMT deguconvert said:

Yes I know this is in process, and if you think the list on Degutopia has an accurate break down of the foods, but a poor method of indicating their approciateness, what changes would you make?

We are not going to make recommendations and only aim to provide the information degu owners need to make an educated decision. I would say however that with enough premade foods for degus available there is no need or reason to use food produced for other rodents.

Feb 28, 2012 18:35:36 GMT deguconvert said:

but not all of our many members (new, old, inbetween, or soon to join) are able to take on the wider more natural nutrition.

I wouldn't agree with this at all. The feeding guide will show how owners anywhere can easily feed a 50% natural nutrition, at the same costs, if they wish to do so.

[butters]

Feb 28, 2012 22:49:35 GMT @fred said:

Feb 28, 2012 18:35:36 GMT deguconvert said:

but not all of our many members (new, old, inbetween, or soon to join) are able to take on the wider more natural nutrition.

I wouldn't agree with this at all. The feeding guide will show how owners anywhere can easily feed a 50% natural nutrition, at the same costs, if they wish to do so.

I thought the whole 50% natural nutrition was born by the fact that degu owners couldn't find or buy any decent degu food in the shops.

What's wrong with pre-made degu food? Most brands are not bad and easy to use and safe, of course you have to check what ingredients are in and such.

I think the whole 50 or even 100% natural nutrition is a good idea and although for me it's a new thing i will probably go that direction either, but i think a lot of degu owners will never go that far.

Maybe it isn't that easy to get all those product together, or it's maybe just too much work and it's just so much easier to buy pre-made food.

Maybe people think it's also safe to buy pre-made food, just look at all different forums and degu websites and you see so many opinions about what a degu can eat and what not.

[butters]

And how would you call this:



Is it pre-made food or can you call it 100% natural nutrition?

[Ady]

Hi butters,
the 50% natural project was about adding natural ingredients to diet that's based on hard feed (nuggets, pellets...). There is nothing wrong with pre-made food.

[butters]

See i should read about the 50% natural nutrition project first.
Well I (and my degus) don't like pellets and nuggets anyway. If you only have pellets i can see why you add herbs and other stuff.

[deguconvert]

Feb 29, 2012 18:52:19 GMT Ady said:

Hi butters,
the 50% natural project was about adding natural ingredients to diet that's based on hard feed (nuggets, pellets...). There is nothing wrong with pre-made food.

This is why I think there is value in having a good assessment of the pre-made foods that are out there. It is where most people start, and then often will move further into a more natural diet as they continue to learn about their degus. I think being able to take even a list of ALL rodent foods and say, these items are a definite NO for degus; IE Hamster, Rat, and Rabbit pellet foods should be avoided completely and why, could help to clear up questions that people have when new to degus. Something like you can buy, Butters, is marvelous, and as I said earlier . . . I sure wish those products were available in Canada!!

[moletteuk]

Feb 29, 2012 18:35:26 GMT butters said:

Is it pre-made food or can you call it 100% natural nutrition?

That's actually an interesting question! I'd say that was pre-made natural nutrition, similar to jr farm degu special. These types of product are great in that they make it much easier to feed natural food that is interesting & healthy for the degus. The slight frustration is that the mix is rarely just what you would chose yourself to make a complete, ideal diet. For example the mix you show looks great and tasty, but I'd prefer there not to be so many carrots & peas. You can see the companies thinking we need to put some veg in - I know, peas & carrots are cheap and look good, we'll stick those in.

[davx]

I also used many foods:
Prestige Crispy C
Vitakraft Degu Menu
JR Farm Spezial
JR Farm Premium
Xtravital Degu
Agrobs Chincilla and Degu Food
TPF Degu fit
Agrobs grascobs
Noname Briketts (Big Pellets)
Jr Farm Meerschweinchen light
JR Farm Zwergkaninchen light

Some of them were Bad and i Fed only shortly.

[moletteuk]

I still think it would be useful to collect information about pre-made foods.
Could you tell us anything you think might be relevant about those foods, Davx and anyone else that would like to join in? Things like selective feeding issues, did the degus like it, anything you noted about the proportions of the mix, any unsuitable ingredients, value and so on would all be of interest.

[davx]

I think it is the wrong thinking that the forthcoming feeding guides answers any questions.
A forum is a place where people meet and can discuss experiences, ideas, observations, knowledge, meanings etc. If everyone says that a paper in preparation will answer the questions there isn't any room for exchange of ideas. Well it is of course a good idea to work out background information we can refer to, especially when I think about things like extrudate or pellets. It is more exhaustive to work out an elaborative text over several weeks than write all the details new from remembering the facts stored in the own brain.

So I will go more to the details of course. When I wrote my last post I was in a hurry because I was preparing food before leaving the home and going to work.

First, I documented (in German) a wide array of animal foods I tested during the last years. Here is an overview:
www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/Kategorie%3AFertigfutter
Few of them I didn't test myself, but have the information from other animal owners.

Some general aspects (my own point of view) about some international brands:
- Brands I don't like/don't trust are especially Versele Laga/Prestige and beaphar, yes I fed the Prestige guinea pig food (Crispy C) at the beginning of my degu keeping for several years, but I had poor knowledge about degu feeding and it was a comfortable choice. The beaphar food was a pretended Norwegian Degu Food, my sister bought for me. I was rather disappointed, when I found out, that the food is international available, but that was not the reason, why I'm not enthusiastic about this foods.
- Brands like Vitakraft, Bunny and some others long times seemed to be similar to Prestige etc. But I have the impression that this Brands learned their lesson and offer more natural mixtures.
- The other way round made JR Farm. Once a small but very interesting brand, it was the favourite food of many degu owners. They had had a good quality and were open for wishes from degu owners. Nowadays we can compare them with Vitakraft and so on, but I have the impression JR Farm is even worse. While companies like Vitakraft have a straight forward food collection, the food collection is similar to a weed garden, it is a jungle of similar products and there isn't any logic, too much mixtures for any purposes and much food is also questionable, e.g. "Pizza" for rodents or so called "Wellness" food. They meet the demands of rodent owners yes, but the rodent owners don't have to eat this food, but their animals and this is in my opinion the wrong way of thinking.
- Brands like Agrobs, Hansemann or TPF The Pet Factory - all small german companies have good food quality and are my favourite ones I recommend for German degu owners. But here international it is different, they are unknown and probably do not ship outside Germany.


Criteria I use for analysing a food mixture:

- The usual suspects of cheap and nasty animal food: pellets, extrudates and other artificial shaped, often coloured food items.
- Vitamins and Minerals: many questionable food mixtures contain loads of vitamins and minerals. Often I have the impression they are added with the intention: the more the better. I really prefer to supplement fresh green stuff instead of all this artificial vitamins and questionable minerals.
- Toxic substances: e.g. Menadione (so called vitamine K3, in fact it isn't a real vitamine, for human usage it is banned)
- Questionable health claim substances, like the so called FOS (that are indigestible sugars! what a rubbish), aloë vera extract, probiotic substances, etc. Often this substances are promoted on the package with claims like "anti hair-ball", "no smell", "gut regulation" and so on
- Herbal by-products: also an indicator for cheap and nasty animal food. It includes stuff like flour/meal, pomace, oil, etc. Often used plants are soy bean, alfalfa, corn, wheat, barley, peas, rape, oil palm, grape etc.

[davx]

So here is my list again, updated and with comments:

Prestige Crispy C
picture: www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/Bild:Trofu.JPG
It contains questionable extrudates and pellets, corn flakes etc.

Vitakraft Degu Menu
picture: www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/Vitakraft_Degu_Menu (package only)
As I remember well, this mixture was similar to the Prestige Crispy C, but it was hard to buy and more expensive.

JR Farm Spezial
picture (and description): www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/JR_Farm_Degu_Spezial
This was my favourite degu food for a long time. Unfortunately it seems that the quality decreased when the company grew and became more and more international.

JR Farm Premium
picture (and desc.): www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/JR_Farm_Degu_Premium
Similar to the JR Spezial, but it contains extrudates, therefore I never liked this as much as the Spezial mixture.

beaphar Xtravital Degu
picture (and desc.): www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/Beaphar_Degu_Xtravital
My Norwegian degu food... Well I found disappointing the amounts of extrudates and pellets. Also nearly all ingredients are cheap animal food, no fine herbs... I can buy a no-name mixture as well and I'll get a similar mixture for much less money.

Agrobs Chinchilla and Degu Food
pictures (and desc.): www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/Agrobs_Pre_Alpin_Lepo_Nature
One of the best food mixtures I ever tested. The quality was impressive... but also the price.
The only disadvantage besides the price was the lack of energy rich food items (e.g. seeds, grains). But that isn't a problem because it is simple to enrich the food with a bird seed mixture.

TPF Degu fit
picture (and desc.): www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/Pet_Factory_Degu_Fit
Another impressive food mixture. It also had a really good quality, was less expensive than the Agrobs mixture and contained also some seeds/grains.

Agrobs grascobs
pictures: www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/Agrobs_Pre_Alpin_Wiesencobs
It looks like thick pellets but the ingredients are different: the so called "cobs" contain meadow plants... it is similar to a good quality hay, but chopped in particles of about 0,5 to 2-3 cm lenght and pressed in a pellet like form. My degus didn't love this food much, but in smaller quantities they used it as supplement to the regular food.

Noname Briketts (Big Pellets)
pictures (and desc.): www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/Briketts
Well this was much fun... see this picture here and you can imagine why
www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/Bild:Brikett_degu.jpg
The Briketts were too big for the degus (I assume they were intended for horses), but they had fun for several weeks and I also.

Jr Farm Meerschweinchen light
no picture, similar to the Zwergkaninchenfutter (below).

JR Farm Zwergkaninchen light
picture: www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/JR_Farm_Zwergkaninchenfutter_light
I used this as supplement because it contains dried vegs and no grains, extrudate and so on. The cobs limited the amount I fed to the degus. They ate them only in smaller quantities, therefore it never was a option as main food. But I was pretty happy with this food, only the cobs were a bit a problem.

In addition I pick here out some further mixtures:

Yes I also tested the Multifit Degu Food and I wasn't happy with it.
here the picture: www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/Multifit_Degu
I tested it in 2007 once. For me there were to much extrudate, pellets and it had hardly high quality food items like fine herbs.

Quiko (in US known as Sun Seed!) Garden Flower Salad
picture: www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/Quiko_Blumen_Garten_Salat
This was a pretty interesting mixture. Perhaps that is also an option for our American owners. Because Quiko (Germany) and Sun Seed (US) work together. Quiko is known as supplier for bird food and accessoires and Sun Seed probably has a similar collection. It might be worth to search for a bird shop and have a look to their products. Eventually there are interesting products also suitable for our degus.

JR Farm Chinchilla Spezial
picture: www.degupedia.de/wiki/index.php/JR_Farm_Chinchilla_Spezial
Interesting mixture intended for chinchillas. I tested it only once, because it was when I already fed mainly fresh plants. I had the impression that quality is pretty good and it seemed worth to test it.

[deguconvert]

Davx, THANK YOU for writing out that Criteria for analyzing a food mixture!! THIS is very helpful information to have and I am most grateful for it. It gives us examples and an idea of what we are seeing when we read ingredients. I have often wondered at the long lists of vitamins and minerals, but assumed they were of value rather than just something more to throw into the pot. This, at least to me, is a very helpful tool to "untangle" the messy lists of ingredients that are so confusing.

Providing owners with tools that will help each one discern what they are looking at will go a long way to helping us make better and wiser choices.

[moletteuk]

I thought it would be useful to carry on with this thread and collect more information and views on commercial foods.

J R Farm Degu Premium



Price approx £8 for 2kg Observations: Good food, well liked by my degus, they eat all of it. Would prefer there to be fewer bean flakes, carrots, parsnips and beetroot, but I pick some of them out and make sure they are evenly distributed

Beaphar Xtravital Degu


Price approx £4.50/kg Observations: Watch out for different versions of this food, there is a version with 20% protein which is higher than preferred. My degus like it, but do show preference for some pieces over others. Too many locust/ carob bean pieces. More peas and carrots than I would prefer.

Supreme Science Selective Degu


Price approx £3 for 350g
Observations: Good nugget food, well like by my degus. Very hard. The pieces are a bit big. Expensive for what it is. Boring on its own but useful for selective feeders.