diets

Question
MY hamsters cage is 3ft long 2ft wide and 1.5 high and it has a wheel, slide, and a tube leading to a bed. Its a panda bear hamster and its chubby can you tell me what a good diet is for her ?

Answer
Dear Brendan,
thank you for your question.
I think it's great that you offer your hamster such a big cage, I'm sure she loves it :) Depending on what brand of food you offer, it may have a lot of sunflower seeds, peanuts and raisins in it. Gather out almost all of those, throw away the peanuts (often contain mold spores) and offer the sunflower seeds and raisins only as treats. You can also mix your own food. Get a good brand of hamster food (I like Kaytee FortiDiet or Ecotrition) and mix it 1:2 with a six grain mixture, you can buy those at health food stores. They usually contain wheat, barley, oat, millet, rye and some other type of grain.
Don't feed storebought treats or chew sticks, they are usually made with way too much sugar. You can bake your own chew sticks by mixing flour with water until it's sticky and then adding some of the hamster food, maybe add an egg, grated carrot, apple, zucchini, dried brine shrimp, squashed banana, some nuts ect. Fill the dough into toilet paper roll or use a spoon to form cookies. Bake for 15-30 minutes. The cookies can be stored in a cookie jar or can be frozen (I recommend freezing).

Let her work for her food - scatter the food in the bedding so that she has to search for it or hide it in toilet paper rolls, crumpled paper or cardboard boxes. You can also thread her fresh food on a piece of string or clamp it between the cage bars. All this will make her move more instead of just sitting in front of the food bowl. It will also keep her entertained.
I hope I was of some help to you
Jennifer