How to choose the best seed mix available to you

[Kikya]

There are many factors to consider when you are choosing a seed mix for your hamster. Not all mixes are equal, and some are definitely better than others. Some people are limited by access to high quality mixes or by personal income. No one is perfect and we all try to do the best we can. Not all mixes are available to everyone in every country, so just try to get as close as you can or consider making your own mix. Etsy is a great place to find good quality seed mixes and here is a LIST of some of the easier to find mixes in the US and other places.

Variety and quality are a huge part in making sure your hamster does not have nutritional deficiencies. With both high variety and high quality, the nutritional aspect is covered as well. As omnivores, your hamsters do best with a diet that is varied. They enjoy it more, it’s more enriching, and it’s more nutritious. If a large part of your hamster’s diet is made up of one single food, they risk a greater chance of nutritional deficiency, by either not eating enough of other foods that have the nutrient they need or by the single food lacking in a nutrient that is essential. Variety and quality also prevents your hamster from just refusing their foods until they are hungry enough to eat it (though all species have preferences, such as Syrians often turning their noses up at millet). Unfortunately, just looking at the label and counting the ingredients is not going to give you an idea of how much variety a mix has or how good the ingredients are. On commercial mixes, ingredients are listed from most used to least used. This means the first ingredient makes up the largest percentage of the mix. Here are some things to avoid and things to look for.

Avoid:
– Repeat ingredients, ingredients such as soybean hulls and soybean meal are essential the same ingredient nutritionally speaking. When you are counting the ingredients, you will need to count those as the same.
– Fillers, corn is often thrown into small animal foods as a filler. There’s very little in the way of nutrition from most corn (with the exception of some rare heirloom varieties). It’s mostly just carbohydrates and starch. Your hamster’s diet already heavy on carbohydrates so corn is essential unnecessary. That’s not to say all mixes with corn are bad but that it should not make up the bulk of the mix. Soybean hulls are another example of almost no nutrition, just filler. A whole soya bean is more nutritious than the hull/shell.
– Pellets, pellets are mostly leftover foods that are too poor quality to sell as the whole food or are not able to be digested properly without chemically breaking them down and then extruding them into small pieces. It’s best to avoid and your hamsters dislike them as well. They will avoid them unless they have no other option.
– Added Sugars, this is often disguised by calling it something else. Molasses, beet root pulp, anything ending with an -ose, such as dextrose are all hidden forms of sugar. The manufacturers add those ingredients (like they do with humans) to make the food more addicting and palatable. Unsulphered blackstrap molasses is actually a very high-quality food, rich in minerals. However, the version of molasses that they use in most foods (animal and human) is more of a by-product of making processed sugar and should be avoided.
– Preservatives, these are unnecessary in a dried seed mix that is made fresh. Dried foods have been a method of preservation for a long time. Seeds and grains can last 20+ years properly dried and stored. The reason they add in preservatives to animal and hamster foods is because the cereals and pellets need them to maintain freshness over a long period of time. Which means you aren’t getting the freshest foods. There is a lot of debate about the safety of preservatives, however many of the preservatives used in the US are banned in other countries. I prefer to avoid them all together because with a fresh mix of good quality, it’s unnecessary.
– Artificial dyes, any dyes that use a color than a number like a Red 40 or Yellow 5 is best avoided. These types of dyes, while presumed (not proven) safe in small quantities, have been shown in studies to have affects on small children and animals. Both aforementioned dyes are banned in many other countries as well. I personally avoid dyed ingredients and chew toys, even ones dyed with natural ingredients, but it is much more important to avoid artificial dyes due to the lack of information regarding safety. Presumed safe means we don’t know that it’s safe, but we don’t know that it’s not safe either. Not the most confident statement ever.

Look for:
– Whole foods, processed foods have less nutritional value and more empty calories than whole foods. This is true for humans or for animals. The best kinds of mixes are not full of cereals, pellets, meals, or flakes but of individual whole food ingredients. Instead puffed wheat, or corn flakes, look for wheat, or kamut.
– Number of ingredients, the best and healthiest seed mixes have at least 30-40 individual ingredients of seeds, grains, and insects. Some will also have dried vegetables; however, I am of the opinion that it’s better to have more kinds of seeds and grains and give vegetable fresh as dehydrated vegetable lose some of the nutritional value when dehydrated.
– Organic quality, the quality of the ingredients is crucial to a seed mix because the quality has a large impact on the nutritional value of the food. While a GA (guaranteed analysis) can give you a baseline to start from, it doesn’t tell anything about where the food came from, how it was grown or raised, and how nutritious it is. Usually, commercially grown foods are less nutrient dense than organically grown foods. This is because with organically grown foods you must have a natural source of fertilizer such as manure or compost which provides a wider range of nutrients to go back into the soil. Commercially grown foods, use petrochemical products to replenish the nitrogen in the soil to be able to keep growing food in the same spot but that doesn’t replenish all the other nutrients, vitamins and minerals, etc. That is not to say everything that has an organic label is good, but you do have a higher chance of getting nutritionally adequate items if it was grown organically. I would always encourage asking questions, regarding the sourcing of ingredients for a seed mix. Any seller of a mix should be able to answer questions about the farming practices of involved growing their seeds and making sure their seeds were not treated with any chemicals.
– Flour/Oil Seed ratio, this is a decent indicator of a high quality mix. There is some debate on the optimal flour/oil seed ratio with ranges from 60:40-80:20, depending on the species and health conditions of the individual hamster. But if you are generally in that range, I see no cause for concern unless your hamster develops health issues as they age.

You’ll noticed I didn’t include looking for the GA, that’s because it’s simply not a good indication of a “good” mix. Most commercial mixes do not even reach the GA requirements generally thought of as necessary. Unless you purchase a German mix, most commercial seed mixes will require at least a booster of protein and more than likely a mix in of some other seed mix due to the lack of variety. Homemade mixes are more likely to be complete and meet minimum standards of GA. Usually, the GA will be listed along with the flour/oil seed ratio with homemade mixes. But as I said in the Basic Hamster Nutrition post, the GAs can be off by 20% in either direction and still be in compliance with the regulations, that goes for the ingredients people are using for their seed mixes as well.

Sometimes you will have to trade off some of these things due to factors outside your control. Just do the best you can and reach out the community for suggestions on how to improve your hamster’s diet. There is no one size fits all model for hamster feeding and we all will continue to learn more and more as time goes on. Please do not shame anyone for using a specific type of food, instead let’s help each other grow!

[Fluffytherobo]

Oh nice the breeder makes her own mix so since I can’t get anything she giving me a pound for free along with the blocks

[Spud]

Could we add to this post/make a separate thread about recommended mixes available in different countries? I feel like we get a lot of questions about this (especially from Canadian hamster owners ).

E.g. Suitable UK mixes for Syrians: Rodipet, Getzoo, Versele-Laga Muesli... (there are some more available in this post, but I'm not sure how good they are.