Hamster fitness

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You said that you can answer questions about hamster diet, I'm not sure if you can answer this, but here it goes anyways. My hamsters are overweight and I have changed their diet and allowing more excersize but no results. Can you advise something?
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Dear Alex,
thank you for your question.
I need some more information to answer it:
How much do your hamsters weigh and are they dwarfs or Syrian hamsters? How big is their cage? What do they eat now?
Please get back to me
Jennifer
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I do not actually know how much my hamsters weigh, how can you weigh them?
They are definately not dwarfs, but can there be other types than dwarfs and syrians? If not, then they are syrian. I am just estimating, but their cages are 2ft by 1ft by .5 ft. They eat a hamster food called Vita-vittles, and I also give them carrots or spinach leaves daily. I also give them 1/2 of a red grape. Every 2 to 3 days I give them a tiny chunk of meat, but I have only been giving them the vegetables, fruit, and meat for a week or two now.
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Thanks for getting back to me.
To weigh a hamster, you need a set of scales that can weigh in gramm/ounce, like a digital kitchen scale. Put the hamster in a container and weigh it, then weigh the container alone and substract the weight of the container from the overall amount. A Syrian hamster can weigh between 100 and 150 gramm. Unless they weigh more than this, they don't need to go on a special diet.
There are other hamster species, but they are not commonly kept, so I guess you have Syrians. All dwarf species are much smaller, only about 2 inches long or less.

Vita-vittels is a very fattening food. I recommend mixing your own food, that's usually cheaper than buying commercial food and you know what the food contains then. Get a six-grain mixture (five grain is fine, too) from a health food shop, some birds seeds (for parakeets) and a good comercial hamster food (for example Ecotrition Hamster and Gerbil Diet). Gather almost all sunflower seeds and peanuts out of the commercial food - those are very fatty - and then mix everything in equal shares. You can refrigerate the food very well. Don't use a food dish, just scatter the food in the cage, that way the hamsters must move more to find their food. Two teaspoons of food per hamster per day are enough.

As for vegetables and fruit, you can give them apples, pear, chickweed, zucchini, plums and cherries (without the kernel), dandelion, parsnip, chard, daisies, cucumber, beetroot, corn, pumpkin, strawberries ect. Millet spray (you'll find this in the bird section of most pet shops) are a good treat and will keep the hamster occupied a long time.
If you can, get some mealworms and feed those to the hamsters. But let the mealworms feed on some vegetables (leafy greens work best) to make them more nutritious. Mealworms are healthier for hamsters than meat.

The cages are a bit too small for Syrians. In my opinion the minimum for a Sryrian hamster is 3x2x2 ft in length, width and height. Old fish tanks that are no higher than wide (because of ventilation) make very good hamster homes and can often be bought cheaply at garage sales, pet shops (ask for leaking tanks) or frmo the ads in the local paper.
I hope I was pf some help to you
Jennifer

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 I will try to give them different food, but I don't think that my hamsters are Syrian, they probably are, but I don't think so. They are Black bear and Panda bear hamsters. I recently had them in a much smaller cage, so this one that I told you about is very big and roomy to them. I was reading and it said that fish tanks are bad for hamsters because they can chew off the glue in the corners and that can be very deadly. I don't think I can get mealworms, so could you suggest a type of meat that isn't too bad for them, because they really seem to like the meat. And for the food, at my house we have a lot of grains and seeds and nuts. Could I just mix a little of that to make food?
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Panda and Black Bear hamsters are nothing but colour variations of the original Syrian hamster, just like the different colour forms of parakeets for example.

If you give the hamster lots of toys like cardboard tubes and boxes or branches (for example hazel, birch, beech, oak), he won't chew on his cage. I have kept hamsters in wooden cages without them ever destroying the cage. Chewing of cage bars/cage corners is a sign of boredom and/or a too small cage. Hamsters have incredible energy and need lots of room.

Mealworms are sold at most pet shops. If you cannot get them, feed the hamster cottage cheese, small pieces of egg or krill and brine shrimp (sold dried for as fish food).

You can of course mix the food yourself. You will need oats (or oat meal), barley, rye and buckwheat in equal shares. Add some millet spray and wheat. Then you'll need the same amount of grass seeds, that's why I mentioned the bird seeds, those are a good mixture. Adiitionally, you can add dried herbs, like dill, chickweed, dandelions, parsely, calendula, camomille, stinging nettle and raspberry leaves. Those supply minerals and can also be fed fresh.
To make the food more interesting, you can add a small amount of sunflower seeds, dried corn, dried peas, carob and peanuts.
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Sorry for bugging you so much, but I have tried to give them cottage cheese, but they won't even look twice at it. Can you cook peas and then feed them to hamsters? And could you give hamsters small shrimp just plain and cooked?

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If they are not used to it, it might be that the hamsters need some time to get used to the cheese. Try it a few times. The small shrimps are fine, too, but they should be cooked without salt.
Cooked peas are okay, but fresh peas are better because they have more vitamins.