Balanced Hamster Diet

Hamsters are delightful little companions, full of curiosity and energy. To ensure they live a healthy and happy life, it’s crucial to provide them with a balanced diet that meets their nutritional needs. As omnivores, hamsters enjoy a wide range of foods, and their diet should be varied to offer both nutrients and enrichment. Offering a varied diet including fresh foods is a great way to bond with your hamster and they learn to trust you and explore the tasty treats.

Species specific hamster seed mix

Hamsters require a wide variety of seeds, grains, vegetables and protein sources and the best way to ensure that your hamster is receiving the right nutrients is to feed a species specific seed mix. Within the rescue we feed Hamster Mixologist seed mix available on Etsy. Other good quality seed mixes are Getzoo and Hammykins both only available online. The majority of seed mixes or muesli style mixes don’t have the best nutritional content or variety that your hamster needs to thrive. Syrian mixes are suitable for Syrian and Chinese hamsters and dwarf mixes are suitable for dwarfs, robot and winter whites. Generally feed 1 tablespoon of their seed mix every other day.

Commercial pellets that you may find in pet shops are not nutritionally great for hamsters and also don’t provide the enrichment they get from foraging from a good quality seed mix.

What else you can feed your hamster

As previously mentioned hamsters are omnivores and love to forage for food and providing a variety of foods as well as scattering or hiding them around their enclosure is great enrichment for them. It’s important to remember that hamsters are small creatures and as a guide a portion is the size of your hamster’s ear.

Dwarf hamsters are prone to diabetes so feeding high sugar foods such as carrots, peas and fruits should be limited to the very occasional treat.

Nuts can be fed shelled or in the shell for extra enrichment, some hamsters can get into the shells others require the shell to be cracked slightly first.

As you can see from the list above which isn’t exhaustive, hamsters can enjoy a wide variety of foods and its great for their diet and enrichment to vary what you offer them and try not to feed fresh food and protein daily, a couple of times a week is fine and fruits and high sugar foods as a rare treat.

All foods should be plain and not seasoned, cooked in flavourings, seasonings or oil.

Many of the commercial treats are bound together with honey or have other ingredients which aren’t safe or very healthy for hamsters and should be avoided. As you can see from the list above it is very easy to provide your hamster with nutritious treats and you can incorporate these into boredom breakers very cheaply too.

Hamsters also enjoy clutter and foraging around their enclosure and that’s where dried forage is really helpful to scatter around their home for them to explore and munch on. Another important enrichment is providing your hamster with a range of sprays and grasses which not only look great in their enclosure, providing cover, they also provide a nutritious and enriching snack to all types of hamsters. Pagima and Delicha sprays are a great way to provide extra cover within their enclosure and tend not to be eaten much and can be very helpful if your hamster is a little overweight. Popular sprays with hamsters include flax and sorghum which then tend to devour and although the hamsters love them they should only be given every couple of weeks.

Most hamsters love to gnaw on Whimzees (sold as dog chews) but they must be the plain Whimzees not the ones with added calcium, there should be no white on the Whimzee.

Generally, unless advised by your vet, you should avoid any wet or sticky foods as these can become stuck to the insides of the pouches of the hamster and can become difficult to remove.

Introduce new foods slowly and try not to introduce too many new foods all at once.

Hamsters and their Larders

You are very likely to see your hamster stuffing all this wonderful food you are providing them into their pouches and they can stuff an amazing amount of food into these pouches. This is perfectly normal behaviour for hamsters and they will take this food into their burrows and empty their pouches into their larders, they often have a few around the enclosure. It is important to check these periodically to ensure that there is no fresh food going off and if you do need to empty out a larder then you can leave a bit of their fresh seed mix there or scatter a little extra food around their enclosure.