Pre-made foods close-up

[moletteuk]

Yes or even three types. Have another look at the tips at the top of the commercial food chart.

[hiijinx]

Have Pets at Home changed their Degu nuggets recently? The latest bag I bought I swear the nuggets are half the size of the previous bag and the Degu's are hardly touching them. No longer have the old bag to compare but cannot see anything obviously different on the nutrition.

Was suspicious as soon as I saw my local shop has moved the Degu food to the other side of the aisle.

Have browsed through the feeding guide and haven't found anything that is rated as highly for the same price - is it worth making up my own?

[moletteuk]

Have a good look at the commercial food chart thread and also this thread.

A home made diet consists mostly of plants and then topped up with a seed mix like the one at Ratrations.com but you must make sure it's a well rounded diet and you must be aware of vitamin and mineral requirements, you need to provide vit D either through supplements or through a suitable lamp. It's not generally something you can put together quickly because it takes time or money to get together a varied supply of suitable plants and it also takes a while to get your head around the information and commitment. If done right you can achieve a better diet for your degus and whatever your overall approach I recommend adding as much plant matter to their diet as you can.

[hiijinx]

Just seen this newly arrive in our local garden centre, would you recommend it?

[ntg]

I wouldn't recommend it, the cereal content is extremely high and the ingredient list suggests that it's full of a lot of cheap ingredients that aren't beneficial for them. Have you had a look at the commercial food chart?

[xxxshadsxxx]

Not sure if anyone has reviewed this food yet, but thought i'd put it up anyways.
I originally bought it because the local pet store I buy my food from was completely sold out of the stuff i normally buy (its a small pet shop and only usually carries four bags of this food a week, and one person had been in earlier that day and bought all four!!!) and it wouldn't be back in till the next week, and I was almost completely out of food for them (apart from P@H nuggets, but they really don't like them at all!)
So i bought a small bag of this chinchilla food so i would have something to keep them going till i could get there normal stuff again. But when I got it home and tried them on it I thought its actually probably a better mix than the degu one i get them, and half the price! The only problem iv found with it is the fact that it contains raisins, but that just means i have to sift through it all and remove them before i feed it to them





a good handful of the mix, straight from the bag.



and what it splits down into


all the raisins i removed from the 2.5kg bag



and the remaining contents of the bag.

I find its a good mix, and the goos really like it, a lot more than the stuff i was giving them before, and at £7.99 for 2.5kg, its a heck of a lot cheaper too, and lasts a lot longer!

[ntg]

What feed do you normally buy shads? The Charlie Chinchilla still isn't a great feed to give with it containing so many cheap ingredients and grains that aren't the best for degus. It doesn't say the phosphorus content either, which recent studies showed that it should be about half of the calcium content to improve dental health (the calcium should be close to 1% as well).

Have you had a look at the options you can buy online? It often works out cheaper and, two or three better feeds combined with a seed mix like the degu one available on ratrations would make a good improvement to the diet, without breaking the bank as they last for ages when combined with each other

[moletteuk]

Thanks for the nice review. Unfortunately, the calcium & phosphorus content is a massive problem with this product, same as the Supreme Gerty Guinea and Selective Degu. The Calcium content and Ca:P ratio is so low it is dangerous and likely to cause dental issues. It really frustrates me that they don't provide the proper information on the pack. (Also note Degutopia have stopped recommending Gerty Guinea for this reason, although it's a mystery why they still recommend Selective Degu). The grains are a problem too, especially as the grass items, the really dark cylinders, quite often get ignored.

[xxxshadsxxx]

I usually get Beaphar Xtravital Degu food,as it was the only one i could find in my local pet shops that wasn't just grass pellet type food, as i have a big tupper ware box full of the P@H stuff that i bought when i first got the goos, but they really don't like it.

I find there are more grass pellets in the xtravital than the charlie chinchilla, and with the xtravital I end up throwing half of it in the bin because they wont eat it, where as the chinchilla stuff they only leave the grass pellets, but even those they will eat sometimes, and more often than not they will empty there bowls when its chinchilla food, but there always half full of stuff they wont touch when it xtravital.

I know the Ca:P ratio it pretty bad with what they are having now, and if i can find a premade that isnt too expensive and i can get easily i will try swapping to that, so if you have any suggestions of one to try and where i can buy it, let me know my other alternative is to keep them on a mix of this and the xtravital and try and add in seeds and other foods to try and supplement the Ca:P ratio, again if you can recommend which seeds or plants etc are good for this, it would be welcome

[moletteuk]

So you have a bit a of an issue with selective eating whichever mix you feed, and they are leaving the healthy stuff. Unfortunately, this makes the situation with the nutrition in the food and the Ca & P even worse.

I think if I were you I would try the JR Farm Grainless Guinea Pig and the Versele Laga Degu & Chin Crispy, both are pellets and a reasonable price, available from Zooplus although a local shop may be able to order the Versele Laga for you. They look and are fairly grassy, but we have quite a good hit rate for degus liking the JRF GGP on the forum, although the Versele Laga isn't so well liked, it's worth a shot as it has ideal Ca & P. The JRF still has the issue of slightly low calcium, but otherwise it is much healthier than incompletely eaten xtravital or Charlie Chin. To address the calcium I would add some alfalfa and also high calcium seeds to the diet. The seeds are highlighted in the nutrition charts, you can keep the calcium higher with you own mix made only from the top seeds in the chart or you can feed the ratrations mix. It's best not to feed any grains as treats if you are already a bit low on the Ca:P ratio of the commercial food as they can quickly tip the diet into dangerous territory.

Adding forage to the diet is also great for the digestive system and good for mineral content, and is generally the best food so if they eat plenty of natural plants, then the shortcomings of commercial food aren't so critical. Things like dandelion and parsley are good for calcium content, but most hedgerow plants generally have a Ca:P ratio that comes out at the ideal 2:1 when you feed a selection.

[davx]

Apr 11, 2014 11:33:10 GMT moletteuk said:

So you have a bit a of an issue with selective eating whichever mix you feed, and they are leaving the healthy stuff. Unfortunately, this makes the situation with the nutrition in the food and the Ca & P even worse.

I wouldn't call this grass pellets healthy. Maybe they are better than other sorts of nuggets, pellets and so on consisting mainly of cereal byproducts. But they still are in a bad form, heavily processed and worse than most types of hay and even many degu owner again and again experienced and still experience the same thing, this stuff is hardly eaten. So why not just leave it away and replace it without bad compromises with better hay and/or even better fresh green herbs, grasses and leaves?

Also to meet energy demands of the degus, at least for the more experienced owners here why not to replace commercial foods with fresh and dried greens, hay and a seed mixture (e. g. bird seeds, ratrations and so on) and supplemental nuts? You just have so much less of this bad compromises and you get all this even in regions where there are hardly commercial foods suitable for degus.

[xxxshadsxxx]

I would really like to cut out the commercial feeds and just feed natural, but I'm worried that they won't get enough of what they need. I've been going through the things that I give them regularly along with their commercial mix, and the Ca:P ratio of those seems pretty good, It's about 1.78:1 if they were to get equal amounts of everything, but I don't give them as much of the things that are bringing it down as the others, and most of the others have close to the 2:1 ratio. But I'm worried about them not getting enough of other things they might need. Ca:P is talked about a lot on here, so we all know that they want 2:1 when it comes to that, but I don't know what sort of amount of fats and fibers etc they need in there diet as well.
We have recently moved into a house with a decent sized garden, which before had been poorly kept, but as a result has a lot of wild hedgerow plants etc in it, and a couple of good sized trees, so I am hoping to be able to Increase the amount of wild forage that I can include into their diet.

If you could offer any advice on what I could feed them that would allow me to go all natural an still provide them with all the vitamins etc that they need, I would be very grateful

[moletteuk]

If you provide a wide variety of plants, they should get all the vitamins they need, except vitamin D, which is normally absorbed through sunlight. Vitamin D is the main problem of an all natural diet because we have to supplement it through an 'unnatural' means, either through a UV lamp or through a vitamin tablet or liquid dosed out as accurately as possbible. Both methods have drawbacks and limited information. See this for more info www.degus-international.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=1578

Degus will get quite a lot of slow release energy from the plant food, but it is usual to supplement the plants with seeds, mainly oil seeds, to provide some more energy and nutrition.

If you can get enough variety of forage, and they like and will eat plenty of species and many of the healthy seeds, then the main issue is the vitamin D.

[xxxshadsxxx]

Had to go into town today to get a few bits and pieces and my bucket of goo food was getting pretty low, so thought I would nip into the pet store and stock up and noticed a Degu feed in there that I hadn't seen before, so I thought I'd give it a try and see how they liked it and see what you guys thought of it!

So far it has been well received by the boys, The first piece I gave Lister he had a little nibble and then swiftly ran off to hide it for later (I had handed it to him rather than put it in the feed bowls, so he thought it was a treat and hid it and came back for more ) I swiftly dug that piece back out and halved it and tried him again and gave the other half to Kryten, and the both sat for a good few mins happily munching away at it, and Kryten even went so far as to keep a hold of it in his mouth while he ran in the wheel, and then stop and eat more, usually he would just discard food and continue running when he had had enough of it. Lister then went on to bury the rest of his piece for later, but came back for a another piece after a while. So it seems like they like it! now we just have to see if its any better than the old stuff!









as you can see they are quite large pieces, so I had broken it in two when I offered it to them (they are really really hard!)

It doesn't give a percentage for either calcium or Phosphorus, but I did see Calcium iodate anhydrous mentioned at 1.5mg

I was hoping if they liked it that feeding this a couple of times a week, with small amounts of there old food on other days and a mix of seeds leaves and other forage that it might help with the issues of not getting all of the vitamins and minerals etc that they need because of selective feeding with there other pre-made food mixes. With it being a compressed nugget it they eat any of it they are receiving all of the nutritional parts that it offers, where as before they tended to just pick out the tastier pieces and leave the nuggets so weren't getting the vitamins etc that had been added into the mix in them.

Would appreciate your views on this mix, and weather you think it will help towards the C:Pa

[moletteuk]

Lol Shads, you need to study the commercial food chart before you go shopping! Unfortunately, this one is just like the other Supreme products and is extremely low in calcium, I contacted them to ask about their products, the Ca:P is 1.2 and Calcium content is 0.6%, which is about half what it should be.

[xxxshadsxxx]

I just noticed it when i was it, i hadn't planed to buy a new type of food while i was out

[Deleted]

This thread is fantastic. I read through all of the comments as well as the food guides that have been posted and have since changed my degu food. My goos now get a mix Pets At Home Degu Nuggets, JR Farm Food Degu Adult, Crispy Pellets and a little JR grainless mix. They get a bowl of fresh/dried vegetables and herbs twice a week and as treats they either have oats, dried flowers or beetroot and rosehip cookies. Obviously they always have plenty of hay as well.

They seem much happier now that their hard feed isn't just the Pets at Home nuggets!

[moletteuk]

Great, they do appreciate some variety You might like to add in some alfalfa and some high calcium oil seeds (like the Ratrations mix), and some more forage would be great

[Deleted]

I did consider the ratrations mix. I have pumpkin and sunflower seeds at the moment but give them really sparingly since they lack the high calcium. I'll definitely pick up something, they love to forage and little seeds like that would be great

[claire]

May 8, 2014 14:55:02 GMT @lkiitma said:

This thread is fantastic. I read through all of the comments as well as the food guides that have been posted and have since changed my degu food. My goos now get a mix Pets At Home Degu Nuggets, JR Farm Food Degu Adult, Crispy Pellets and a little JR grainless mix. They get a bowl of fresh/dried vegetables and herbs twice a week and as treats they either have oats, dried flowers or beetroot and rosehip cookies. Obviously they always have plenty of hay as well.

They seem much happier now that their hard feed isn't just the Pets at Home nuggets!


Is this still a fairly decent mix to feed?