Bought some new treats..need help?

[dyzired]

Helllo all!!!
Let me start off by saying this may be a long post..but please I would love the help if you could take the time to read through it!
I went to the store and decided to buy a bunch of treats for my boys. I would like your feedback on these...I was going by memory and common sense and I HOPE I did okay with what I picked up. If you guys can give me your two cents on what I bought...that'd be great...let me know if theres an ingredient in one of these that they CANT have that I overlooked...or if I can just pick out certain pieces...or just any advice please. And how often they can eat them....

okay...
First one..

*Box o Hay variety pack-
ingredients----
1st box - natural sun-cured timothy hay, dried carrots
2nd box - natural sun-cured timothy hay, dried mint (wasnt sure about this???)
3rd box - natural sun-cured timothy hay, dried marigolds

Second thing....

*Dried Veggie Medley
indredients.....
dried carrots, dried sweet potatoes, dried green peas, dried tomatoes, dried green beans, dried zucchini, dried bell peppers, rose petals.
(this one looks yummy!)


3rd thing.....

*peas n carrots
indredients.........
dehydrated carrots, pea flakes, green split peas


4th thing......

*Extreme HighC (was very hesitant about this one..not sure if they can eat anything in it..but it looked good..and was hoping it could be a rare treat for them.)
ingredients......
rose hips, cranberries, and kiwi


5th thing...

*sweet potato stick snacks
ingredients....
dried sweet potato


6th thing....

*Simple rewards banana treats (another one i didnt really know if they could eat or not...again, hoping to use as a rare treat?)
ingredients...
freeze dried bananas

and the last thing...

*Gerty guinea pig food
I know i've seen a lot of people use this as part of their degu diet...it looked yummy...I was hoping I could use this for my degus as well..they currently get degu pellets ( reviews.petco.com/3554/106691/sun-seed-sun-seed-sunscription-vita-degu-adult-food-reviews/reviews.htm ) as their main diet as its the only degu food readily available in my area. I was thinking I could feed this a couple times a week or even every other day? Or just mix it in with their stuff now??
I'm not going to list the ingredients as there are a lot...and I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with the product.

But heres my flickr....
www.flickr.com/photos/nicoles2010/
I've added photos of the front and back of each product I bought so you can see the ingredients and analysis of the foods.


Any advice would be great! Thanks again guys!!!!

[moletteuk]

Good news! Most of it is fine

The hay is fine, just make sure they don't get a load of carrot in one go, but it's unlikely anyway.

Dried Veggie Medley is really good

Peas and carrots is less good, but OK in little bits, I think the Veggie Medley is a better purchase for the future.

Extreme high C: the rose hips and cranberries are good but in very small quantities. I'm not sure about the kiwi, don't know if they would like it even, probably not OK, I think the rose hips and cranberries probably have lower sugar.

Sweet potato sticks OK in small amounts.

Banana treats unfortunately not OK.

Gerty Guinea is probably similar quality to Sunseed, so it's fine to mix it up, either all together or alternate days or whatever. It has a slightly low calcium to phosphorus ratio, you can improve this if you can find celery seeds or fennel seeds or dandelions to supplement.

Did you see this thread that Winic started? It has some mail order sources for dried veg. deguworld.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=food&action=display&thread=15749

Don't forget our veg nutrition charts can help you choose good veg

[dyzired]

Thank you!! I actually though carrots were not that bad for them...thank you for letting me know that they shouldnt get them that often! Is the hay one with the mint okay? That just seemed like something that they wouldnt like/may not be able to have. And I was taking a giant leap with the banana treats..I'll just give those away =P

and thank you! I will use your advice on the gerty guinea food! And no I did not see that thread yet! I'll check it out now =] Thanks so much.

[dyzired]

Just checked it out...the veggie medley and peas and carrots were the same ones I purchased...I also saw the seagrass strips today and almost bought them but I wasnt sure exactly what that was! I'll have to go back and pick it up because I'm sure my boys would love that. and I'll have to check out those sites as well. Thanks again!

[dyzired]

What is the difference in freeze dried and dehydrated?? Can they have one but not the other?

[moletteuk]

Big handfuls of mint on its own wouldn't be a great idea, but the amount of mint in the hay mix will be OK, you'll have to report back and tell us whether they actually like it or not

It's a good idea to use more than one main food mix, it helps even out any nutrition kinks and provides a little variety.

[deguconvert]

Rose hips and cranberries can have fairly high amounts of sugar in them, so you shouldn't give them too frequently. However, they will likely enjoy them so will make great treats.

[moletteuk]

Jun 18, 2012 19:18:13 GMT dyzired said:

What is the difference in freeze dried and dehydrated?? Can they have one but not the other?

I think they are just different ways of drying out the food, it doesn't make a difference to the degus.

[dyzired]

Thanks you guys! And if I fed my boys the pellets every other day, and the Gerry guinea food every other day, do I just supplement them with what you said on the days they get the Gerty guinea food? And how much of the supplementing foods should they have each day?

[dyzired]

Just threw in about a tablespoon of gerty guinea pig food for my boys to try out tonight (Im petsitting at a womans house for 2.5 weeks..so I couldn't really enjoy letting my boys try out all the other new yummy treats today..) and of course rocket went straight at the bowl...little fatty. I wasn't able to stick around long though to see Moose's reaction! =[ Will have to see them tomorrow afternoon and see what they thought of it =]

[deguconvert]

LOL! Well . . . it sounds like Rocket was pleased. Hopefully Moose got a chance at it too.