Several questions regarding diet

[renk777]

HIIII!!!  So I'm new here...long story short, we just adopted 2 little girls...Kanga & Roo.  I'll post pics when I'm able to get them.  They are currently in a detolf on my dining room table but they will be my son's pets so will ultimately be moved to his room.  The woman we adopted them from was feeding a mix of foods...Oxbow Garden Select as well as some blocks that are primarily soymeal (I will not be using these past the acclimation window) and a nut/seed/fruit/pellet mix.  My hope was to feed the Oxbow GS with healthy treats on the side but from what I've read, gerbils really enjoy the diversity of mixes and benefit from them not only physically but psychologically.  Considering their diet in the wild, that makes sense. But I have learned from personal experience that while organic food is not perfect, it greatly reduces exposure to some pretty hefty pesticides and such.  And considering how small gerbils' bodies are, I'd really like to offer the cleanest diet possible to ensure the longest life possible.  I'm really smitten with these two little bugs.  The Oxbow GS is non_GMO and fairly clean so I'm hoping to feed that and make up for the lack of fat and high protein ration with organic seeds and nuts and such.  But I'm not sure about ratios and I couldn't find any posts from others feeding the Oxbow GS and in what quantity and how much of other foods they add to meet gerbils' recommended nutritional profile.  Oxbow recommends 5 tbsps. of feed per gerbil...that's a lot.  So if I halve that amount and offer my own mix of nuts and seeds on the side, what would be an appropriate amount for 2 gerbils?  And is there a solid list of treats and foods they can have that you all swear by?  So far, I know chocolate and rhubarb and onions are a no...no surprise there.  But I have seen some sites recommend cabbage and others say it's dangerous.  So much conflicting advice on the web regarding other foods as well. So if I did 5 tbsps. of the Oxbow GS after the acclimation period and then added 5 tbsps of a me-made-mix of nuts and seeds and peas and such, would that be a safe way to feed them?  I have rehabbed and raised many animals in my life; I'm not new to keeping pets.  We currently have dogs, cats, aquariums, hamsters, mice and chickens.  And our animals are all healthy and happy and that's good.  But it seems as though gerbils are a bit more sensitive and I want to make sure we get this right on a diet that I feel is as organic as I can swing.  Any advice?  

[eowynandpoppy]

Hi and welcome to the Gerbil Forum !
To answer your questions, Oxbow GS is a pretty good food, at least in my opinion. My #1 gripe with it is that it's so boring for them, haha. This can be fixed, however, by feeding them mixed veggies and a few treats, and a dried herb mix (I really like this one- it's only a few bucks at Walmart! link) Another fun thing you could do is sprout some whole oats or millet seeds for them and snip off the leaves when they grow (don't put the entire container into the tank unless the soil is safe)! My gerbils LOVE when I do this. I also sprout the little seed packets you can buy- right now I'm growing collard green and carrot sprouts on my windowsill.
Definitely DON'T feed your gerbils 5tbsp each! That's way too much! Each gerbil should get about 1tbsp per day, though it varies by gerbil. So, feed your pair 2tbsp and you can increase or lower the amount by a bit depending on how much they end up eating.
If you're going to mix foods, be sure that you're keeping good nutritional values! There's a good calculator that someone made for this on the Hamster Hideout Forum, but it can be used for gerbil food as well so I'll link it here.
calculator
Here's a page with lists of safe veggies for gerbils that I think is trustworthy: veg list, and it also includes a schedule. Just be aware that none of the gerbils I've owned have really enjoyed their vegetables.... they're good for them though, so I'm going to keep trying ! They really enjoy leafy greens and lettuce, though.
Cabbage in small amounts is safe for gerbils, but just be careful with it because feeding it alongside commercial pellets could cause gas. A little every once in a while shouldn't hurt them, though.
Don't pressure yourself to make their whole diet organic unless you really want to- it's great if they can have an organic diet (spoiled little gerbils! haha), but gerbils are actually REALLY hardy little things and they'll be alright with non-organic veggies too.

[LilyandDaisy]

5 tbsps. (presumably per day?) does sound like a lot. Although mine have never eaten as much as the food packets tend to say they should, so I don't measure out the food anymore, I just fill the bowl and leave them to empty it before it is refilled.

There's also a nutrition calculator on this forum (pinned in the food section) which has the nutritional details for lots of different foods already filled in.

[renk777]

Nov 19, 2019 11:24:57 GMT -8 eowynandpoppy said:

Hi and welcome to the Gerbil Forum !
To answer your questions, Oxbow GS is a pretty good food, at least in my opinion. My #1 gripe with it is that it's so boring for them, haha. This can be fixed, however, by feeding them mixed veggies and a few treats, and a dried herb mix (I really like this one- it's only a few bucks at Walmart! link) Another fun thing you could do is sprout some whole oats or millet seeds for them and snip off the leaves when they grow (don't put the entire container into the tank unless the soil is safe)! My gerbils LOVE when I do this. I also sprout the little seed packets you can buy- right now I'm growing collard green and carrot sprouts on my windowsill.
Definitely DON'T feed your gerbils 5tbsp each! That's way too much! Each gerbil should get about 1tbsp per day, though it varies by gerbil. So, feed your pair 2tbsp and you can increase or lower the amount by a bit depending on how much they end up eating.
If you're going to mix foods, be sure that you're keeping good nutritional values! There's a good calculator that someone made for this on the Hamster Hideout Forum, but it can be used for gerbil food as well so I'll link it here.
calculator
Here's a page with lists of safe veggies for gerbils that I think is trustworthy: veg list, and it also includes a schedule. Just be aware that none of the gerbils I've owned have really enjoyed their vegetables.... they're good for them though, so I'm going to keep trying ! They really enjoy leafy greens and lettuce, though.
Cabbage in small amounts is safe for gerbils, but just be careful with it because feeding it alongside commercial pellets could cause gas. A little every once in a while shouldn't hurt them, though.
Don't pressure yourself to make their whole diet organic unless you really want to- it's great if they can have an organic diet (spoiled little gerbils! haha), but gerbils are actually REALLY hardy little things and they'll be alright with non-organic veggies too.


Oh, TY!  I feel so much better!  The 5tbsp sounded like way too much as everywhere else I read, the common consensus seemed to be a heaping tbsp. per gerbil.  Since I feed our hamsters the same food, I checked the recommendation for them and it was 2 tbsp. per hamster per day...which is spot on.  So I figured the 5 tbsp. for the gerbils  was due to the fact that hay is an ingredient high on the list but not as nutrient dense as the nuts and seeds and such in other mixes.  Kind of like you have to eat a lot of junk food to get your RDA of various nutrients whereas you could get the same from a couple of healthy snacks.  Anyway, I'm glad to hear they're hardy little buggers!  We adopted mice last summer.  They were 6  months old.  We were heartbroken to lose 2 fairly early on...one of unknown causes and the other had that skin condition that fancy mice are unfortunately prone to.  It was awful.  I had already moved their diet over to the best feed I could find but for mice there aren't any non-GMO or organic options.  So we supplemented the mice's diet with organic dog kibble and organic chicken feed and our one little mouse is about to turn 2 years old. She now has 2 new buddies.  And we have slowly acclimated them to quite a bit of fresh and organic fruit and produce.. Hoping the gerbils will learn to appreciate it as much as our mice and hamsters do!  Anyway, so excited for little Remi's 2 year birthday...from what I hear, is pretty awesome as most don't make it to 2 years.  I found with my own health that even though I used to eat pretty healthy, I struggled a lot with health issues until I went 100% organic.  And now, I'm faring much better than I ever did.  So when I can, I do try to do organic or non_GMO for my pets too.  Just in case they didn't win the genetic crapshoot either LOL  But I will def check out those links you suggested and I love the idea of sprouting some seeds for them.  I used to sprout years ago but stopped because I was the only one eating the sprouts.  Now I'll have someone to enjoy them with!  

[renk777]

Nov 19, 2019 11:51:46 GMT -8 LilyandDaisy said:

5 tbsps. (presumably per day?) does sound like a lot. Although mine have never eaten as much as the food packets tend to say they should, so I don't measure out the food anymore, I just fill the bowl and leave them to empty it before it is refilled.

There's also a nutrition calculator on this forum (pinned in the food section) which has the nutritional details for lots of different foods already filled in.


TY!!! Headed over there now

[Pim]

I encourage you to do a bit more research on what GMO is as its not bad at all. You definitely don’t need to have a non GMO food for your pets and I encourage you to use a mix instead of a block as well. But if your looking to use that block remember that hay provides barley any nutrients since its hard to digest for gerbils. So the guaranteed analysis might not be totally correct. Alfalfa hay is fine but Timothy is not.

[betty]

Hey Pim, just wanted to ask what you meant about Timothy Hay in your post:

Aug 3, 2020 7:49:30 GMT -8 Pim said:

But if you're looking to use that block remember that hay provides barely any nutrients since it's hard to digest for gerbils. So the guaranteed analysis might not be totally correct. Alfalfa hay is fine but Timothy is not.

Timothy Hay is one of the most widely used hays given to gerbils and other small animals so wasn't sure if you had missed out a word somewhere.

[Pim]

I was saying that in foods such as oxbow the timothy hay isn't totally digestible when they eat it meaning they don't get all the nutrients out of it and it throws off the Guaranteed analysis. In a fortified block the stuff is processed do they can. sorry I worded that badley. also timothy hay in the cage is fine because they don't eat it.

[betty]

Ah, right yes, the total nutrients shown on labels really are only a guide of what the food itself breaksdown to in a lab - not always a true represention of what is actually does in the animals you are feeding it to. Very true.

Although technically, in an extruded food, it is only the nutrients themselves that matter not the ingredients per se - as everything it totally cooked down into a mush to make the pellets. So, it wouldn't matter tecehnically that it was Timothy Hay that went in - it just matters what the digestibilty (or indigestibility if it was put in the food for fibre) of those nutrients were once it was made into a pellet - and fed to a gerbil.

All very complicated and layered in muck...