Opinions on this Homemade mix.

[Demonic Hope]

Recently I've been struggling with selective feeding with my gerbils and mice. I have been mixing most comerical mixes with some extras but Jassie especially is being just awful. She actually went 48 hours without touching the yucky bits of her food before I gave in an added more.

So I've decided to cut out the processed parts and let them have a more natural diet. Jassie is totally boycotting any of the pebble bits including oxbow so I've decided this is best.

This is my plan so far. Can someone look it over?


The mix

9lbs of this Wild Bird Food

It contains millet, black oiled sunflower seeds, and safflower.

7 OZ of dried mealworm

1lb rolled oats

1/2lb of dog food I feed it to my dog so easy for me to add.

16 oz of elbow macaroni.

16 oz of puffed brown rice.

16 oz of puffed wheat.

5oz of dried cranberries NO ADDED SUGAR (A mouse of mine has battled UTIs and since adding these I haven't had any urine issues)

So thoughts?

[qtoffer]

I'm always having the same problem with my gerbils. I feed them Sunscription Vita Prima Rat/Mouse/Gerbil or Hamster/Gerbil formula. They eat some of the seeds and all of the colored bits, but completely avoid the pressed timothy hay logs. Excluding seed hulls, I probably end up throwing out about 1/3 of what I put in their food bowl. At $7 per 2 lb bag, it seems like such a waste of money sometimes - but at least Vitakraft ALWAYS has a $5 off three bag rebate offer on their Facebook page.

Did you come up with your proposed mix based on something you're seen here or elsewhere - any idea how much protein and fat it contains? It can be difficult to get the proper ratio of protein and fat with home made mixes. You're going to have to find out the nutritional info for each component of your proposed mix, and then calculate how much protein and fat each component contributes to the whole based on its percentage by weight. You may find that you have too much fat, or not enough protein - and you'll have to fiddle with the amounts of certain components and recalculate again.

Then, you have to ensure that the gerbils are getting enough vitamins and minerals. Many vitamins break down over time upon exposure to air and light and high temperatures, so you can't just assume they're present in your components,m especially if you're buying bulk quantities. I've read that people who make up their own small animal diets use liquid multivitamin/mineral drops. They make small batches of food - say, enough for a month - and add a few drops of vitamin/mineral while mixing. This way, the oxygen-, light-, and heat-labile vitamins don't break down during storage.

[Demonic Hope]

Yes I plan on adding vitamins and calculating the protein and fat. Does anyone know of a good program? The one Shooting Star made doesn't seem to work with Windows 8

And I am basing this off a rat diet I've seen used for pretty much all rodents with some changes.