Mix or pellets?

[nicola12]

I've been having a look about and there don't seem to be many degu pellets around... with my other pets I prefer to feed pellets to prevent selective feeding.

Do you prefer to give your degus a muesli mix or pellets? What are the benefits of both?

[Maravilla]

Hello nicola,
welcome to the forum!!

Why do you want to prevent selective feeding? Why do you consider selective feeding a bad thing? What are your fears about it?

Have you ever read carefully the ingredients contained in the pellets or different types of industrial food? And have you ever checked their meaning or at least tried to do it?

Many questions, but first of all I'd like to know your reasons for this type of feeding before giving you further information.

[nicola12]

My fears about selective feeding are that they won't get the right nutrients they need from their food.

With the rabbits especially I check fibre content and have changed pellets because one brand contained a meat extract! With the guinea pigs I let them choose their own pellets by trying a few different brands - they are on the brand I like the least but they like it the best!

My only pets on muesli are the hamsters and gerbils and they do leave certain bits. I supplement them with meal worms and cat/dog biscuits though to make sure they get plenty of protein, as well as little bits of veg for the hams (the gerbils aren't so keen).

Thank you for the welcome I am very much a novice so very open to advice the goos are arriving in about 10 minutes! But they are coming with food.

[fred]

Hi Nicola, welcome to the forum I hope you will enjoy a lot of lively discussions here. I suspect you have just started another one

We need to be clear what we mean by selective feeding. What you talk about is selecting from a ready made mix or muesli available as “complete degu food”. In this case, selecting can be problematic and possibly even endanger our degus' health in the long term (e.g. the Gerty Guinea Pig Muesli recommended by Degutopia). As far as these hard feeds are concerned, pellets are the safer choice (provided you get your goos to eat them).

I believe Maravilla was rather thinking about selecting from our home made mixes of natural ingredients (have a look at our 50% natural nutrition project). In this case some selecting is natural and nothing to worry about.

[nicola12]

ah yes I see! I am indeed talking about the former that you mention - home made mixes sound incredible I am talking about store-bought ready made mix

[malteser60]

Continuing on from what fred has said, selective feeding from a wide variety of home mix is ok because you have given them a big variety, which means if they don't eat one type of plant or seed they can get the nutrients from the rest of the mix.

I was the same as you in that I preferred pellets as this prevented selective feeding so that my girls got all the required nutrients. However they went off pellets and I started with muesli, which led to them only eating choice bits. Now I mix in with the muesli a wide variety of plants and herbs to give them more choice, so I'm happy with them being selective. And in all honesty, having such a large choice I've noticed my degus to actually eat more and even eat the bits that they used to leave out. I'm slowly changing their diet to be more and more natural, as well as run down the stock of food I've got right now.

The other nice thing to see is that when I give them their feed they instantly rush off to eat their favourite bits. However throughout the day and even the next day or two they will pick at all the other bits as and when they feel like it. So they may ignore a plant when first given to them only to find them tucking into it with gusto the next day.