tastiest high calorie foods & how many vegetables are okay?

[yeti218]

I'm trying to keep weight on one of my senior gerbils and looking for suggestions on what to feed. He's not always interested in eating hard foods (nuts, sunflower seeds), though he'll still eat these sometimes, but not as reliably as he used to. He likes cheese. He also likes pumpkin and a lot of vegetables. 

So my questions are 

-what are your gerbils favourite snacks? especially interested in high calorie items
-how many vegetables are too many? I don't want to fill him up on low calorie items, or cause digestive upsets, but he's uninterested in a lot of other foods these days. 

[LilyandDaisy]

If he doesn't always want to eat whole nuts and seeds, you could look for milled seeds/nuts (or make your own). They're sometimes sold as breakfast toppers - mixes of milled linseed and hemp usually, sometimes with other ingredients like goji berries. Alternatively you could put shelled seeds and nuts in a food processor to turn them into crumbs which you can either feed dry or mix with a little water to make a paste.

With vegetables, it might be better to only feed these after he's had his main food and high fat supplements, so he's less likely to fill up on the veg to the exclusion of everything else. I think most gerbils can tolerate quite a lot of fresh food without getting digestive upsets. When my gerbil Lily was ill, fresh food was one of her favourite things to eat, and at one point she was eating so much veg she didn't even need to drink water. So I think it's a case of finding what works for your gerbil. I would generally avoid any sudden increases in fresh food provision in any case.

Can you get malt paste where you are? Lots of gerbils love that, and it's high in fat.

[yeti218]

Great suggestions, thank you. I'll definitely try crushing some nuts up. possibly mix with pureed pumpkin since he will always eat that.

Is plain peanut or almond butter okay? the stuff that is 100% nuts. obviously the ingredients are safe I just wasn't sure if it's too sticky for them?

There are some malt pastes I found at nearby pet stores. There are ones marketed towards dogs, cats or ferrets & all have different ingredients. The one for ferrets has the following ingredients "De-Ionized Water, Dextrose, Malic Acid, Button Mushroom Extract, Citric Acid, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Benzonare (a preservative), Potassium Sorbate (a preservative)".

The link you shared (Beaphar multi-vitamin malt paste) won't reveal their full ingredient list, but say "This Beapher paste is made from some finest quality ingredients such as oils & fats, derivatives of vegetable origin, milk & milk products, and yeast"

So, not sure I can get quality malt paste around here?

[LilyandDaisy]

I don't think the product you're looking at is a malt paste. Those ingredients looked very strange for a malt paste so I looked them up and found this, a water supplement for ferrets. I found malt paste on Amazon.ca here and here.

Nut butters are too sticky to feed as a lump as gerbils can choke on it. You can feed any nut butter sold for humans, but spread it thinly on something so they have to lick it up.

[yeti218]

Thanks for the links & the info about nut butters!