Name: Hamster Food | What To Feed Pet Hamster | Syrian Hamster Diet
Uploaded: 2018-05-12T19:19:58.000Z
Duration: 12 min 49 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To bite or not to bite? That is the eternal hamster question.

Hey guys! It's Em, and today I am joined by my little hamster Wookie Latte,

who's a little bit shy, and we're going to be talking about hamster nutrition.

[sped-up voice] He is my rescue hamster, and I say "rescued" because he was found outdoors in a park

in a box, by a friend of mine who walks dogs for a living.

[back to normal speed] Now, a lot of people think that hamsters only eat seeds and nuts

because that's typically what you find when you go and buy a seed mix from the stores.

Hamsters are actually omnivores. They can eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, and even some meat.

Typically when you go to the pet store, you tend to find something that looks like this:

Basically a bag of food with a seed and mixed grain.

But what a lot of pet shops fail to tell you is that hamsters are actually omnivorous.

They eat a whole plethora of foods: everything from fruit, vegetables, to the usual seed,

So I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about hamster nutrition.

It is quite important to switch up the diet a little bit,

because if you're just feeding seeds and nuts and cereals, it can get a little bit boring.

And they're gonna have optimum nutrition if you give a little bit of variation.

Put it this way: it's kind of like living off of cereal for the whole of your life,

even though that you're an omnivore. Would you do that?

No, so please don't do it to your hamster.

This is for Syrian hamsters, and also for Syrian hamsters who don't have diabetes.

if your Syrian hamster has diabetes, please consult your vet.

or if you think that your Syrian hamster might have diabetes

or any other hamster you keep, please consult your vet.

So, grains and nuts. A couple of things that I keep in the house

that I like to feed to Wookie Latte - in small portions, mind you -

are his usual seed, which I scatter feed, which means I don't just put it in a bowl.

I kind of scatter it because it means he has to go and look for it,

Kind of gives him a bit more excitement when it comes to his regular day-to-day activities

and always having something on a plate. He has to actually go and find his seeds.

I give him a mixture of sunflower seeds, he sometimes has flax seed.

You can also feed a little bit of pistachio,

Remember, walnut is very, very fattening, so only feed a little bit of walnut at a time.

Everything in moderation. Moderation is the key.

Some other grain-type foods, carbohydrates, that you can feed to your hamster,

which you might have around the house: little bits of cooked pasta or spaghetti.

Now, I know that sounds weird, but honestly, they love it as a treat.

As a treat! It shouldn't be every day. I give Wookie Latte, who is running on his wheel,

I give Wookie Latte one piece of penne pasta every three or four days.

You can also do the same for brown rice. You can use white rice,

but it's not as good and nutritious for them as brown rice.

So you can get them a little bit of brown rice, or the edge of a piece of toast as well.

Vegetation! This is where I'm going to have to run a whole load of things off pretty quick.

Vegetables! A couple of vegetables that you find around the house quite commonly: sweet potato.

They love sweet potato, but make sure that you cook it first.

Don't feed your potato raw. Give them a little bit of cooked sweet potato,

and they will thank you forever and ever and ever.

Corn on the cob! They love a bit of corn on the cob. Take it off the corn,

I just feed a little bit of sweet corn, so I get two or three pieces of sweet corn a couple of times a week,

And I scatter them, and Wookie Latte absolutely adores them.

He loves them so much that I have replaced his store-bought treats,

which were like a yogurt-drop-type thing, I don't know,

and I've replaced that with corn, and he loves corn. If he's going to calm down in my hands,

it's because he's eating a piece of sweet corn.

Who doesn't like sweet corn? Sweet corn is the best! It's so much fun going in, and it's fun on the other end too...

Celery! Your hamster can eat celery. Give a little bit, make sure that it is washed.

If you can go organic for any of these foods, that is far better to do

because then you know there's no harmful pesticides on there.

In fact, coming to pesticides, another food which is fantastic and a really great treat

which you might see in a dry form in your pet store is dandelion.

They can eat the stalk, they can eat the leaves, and they can eat the head as well.

But make sure if you are gonna feed dandelion, if you go out and collect it yourself,

please, please, make sure that the area you are collecting from is not treated for pesticide.

If you can grow your own dandelions, that is great. Make sure you wash any dandelions from outside

because you don't know if you have dogs peeing on them or pesticides,

just make sure you wash, wash, wash, and please try and get them as natural as possible.

Cucumber! Now, here's a very interesting thing about cucumber, is it's very high in water.

And what happens when the hamster eats lots of things with water, things like lettuce and cucumber?

Diarrhea everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Which you don't want.

Because if your hamster honestly gets diarrhea, it can get dehydrated very, very quickly.

If you suspect that your hamster has diarrhea, take it straight to the vet.

Don't be giving it any Imodium or any over-the-counter medicines, go straight to your vet.

And for that reason, if you're going to feed any cucumber, minuscule amounts.

And they love a bit of good cooked parsnip. I like parsnips, too.

I like them glazed. Don't give them glazed parsnips.

Just bog-standard, roasted parsnip. With nothing on. Nothing at all.

Also watercress. Now, watercress is a fantastic food for that.

You can give them little handfuls of it, and you can watch them. It's really sweet.

They just stuff it in their mouth, so they seem to really love watercress, so watercress is fantastic, too.

Peas! Any peas you can really cheaply buy, shop-bought peas.

You can get them like peas in water, let me see if I can insert something for you.

Where is it gonna come up? [tongue click] Over here.

I buy them in water, that's just a lot cheaper.

There's no nastiness in there. Not mushy peas, garden peas.

So you can get your peas in water. You just pick out one or two at a time.

You can feed maybe two or three of those in a day, so two or three little peas you can feed.

The rest, eat yourself! They're good for you.

Now fruit! Fruit you want to be sparing with, but fruit,

they can actually eat things like banana, little nub of banana, they will love that.

In fact, what I do with Wookie Latte is I get a little bit of banana,

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Hamster Food | What To Feed Pet Hamster | Syrian Hamster Diet

absolutely

diabetes

obesity

straight