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Post by yeti218 on Mar 9, 2021 7:21:37 GMT -8
So my gerbil Chicken is gaining weight quickly. He is 1.5 years old, and I’ve had him for 6 months. He was 80 grams when I got him and he now weighs 96. I’ve been weighing him every few days for the last 2 weeks and he seems to gain a gram or two every time I weigh him.
I know this could be a medical issue, but I think it’s related to gluttony because he is a glutton. When I scatter feed he focuses all his time on looking for and eating all the food right away. I see his brother digging tunnels or running on the wheel, but Chicken is always eating.
Shark, my other gerbil, weighs 75 grams. He’s weighed that since I got him. He’s not overly interested in food, I try to offer him treats when his brother isn’t looking and sometimes he doesn’t take them. When I scatter feed he doesn’t go looking for food right away, and just continues with his important gerbil work.
So I feed Higgins sunburst hamster and gerbil food. I scatter feed 2 tbsp per day. I’m hesitant to feed less because I think Chicken would still eat the same amount, and Shark would get less. So, I’m thinking about picking out the high fat items (sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, cashews, peanuts), continuing to feed the same quantity, and trying to sneak Shark a few of the high fat items.
I’m open to feeding other foods, or potentially even making my own. I am in Canada so not all commercial foods are sold here.
If anyone has any other suggestions, or sees potential problems with my current plan, please let me know. I’ve posted the nutritional information for the Higgins sunburst hamster and gerbil food that I use below.
Nutritional Info Ingredients White Millet, Oats, Wheat, Sun-Cured Alfalfa Hay, Soybean Hulls, Wheat Middlings, Corn, Red Milo, Sunflower Seeds, Flaked Peas, Flaked Beans, Peanuts, Yellow Peas, Flaked Carrots, Flaked Corn, Pumpkin Seeds, Coconut, Raisins, Apples, Cashews, Papaya, Pineapple, Dried Beet Pulp (sugar removed), Soybean Meal, Cane Molasses, Vegetable Oil, Dicalcium Phosphate, Salt, Color Added (Algae Meal), DL-Methionine, L-Lysine, Choline Chloride, Potassium Chloride, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (Source of Vitamin C), Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Vitamin E Supplement, Zinc Sulfate, Ferrous Sulfate, Niacin, Folic Acid, Biotin, Manganese Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Calcium Pantothenate, Thiamine Mononitrate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin Supplement, Zinc Proteinate, Manganese Proteinate, Copper Proteinate, Calcium Iodate, Dried Yucca Schidigera Extract, Sodium Selenite, Cobalt Carbonate, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Dried Enterococcus Faecium Fermentation Product, Dried Lactobacillus Acidophilus Fermentation Product, Dried Lactobacillus Casei Fermentation Product.
guaranteed analysis
CRUDE PROTEIN 15.0% min CRUDE FAT 7.0% min CRUDE FIBER 9.5% max MOISTURE 11.5% max VITAMIN A 8,000 IU/kg min OMEGA-3 FATTY ACIDS 0.40% min DOCOSAHEXAENOIC ACID 0.03% min
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Post by tanzanyte on Mar 9, 2021 15:02:32 GMT -8
My girls were similar. Bubbles tipped the scales in the 90's, but she never really weighed less than 90g no matter what we did, and her sister, Vanilla, was almost too small. We thought Bubbles was stealing all of the food. We did make sure that Bubbles only had one seed as a treat per day and gave her sister more when she was alone in the play area. It still didn't shift the weight like I had hoped. I should have realised sooner that she had a tumour, but was oblivious and thought she was a very chunky monkey. The vet didn't pick anything up when I mentioned her weight and whether I should be worried about her (although the visit was for actually her sister), but she had a good check of both and thought she was fine. Unfortunately it wasn't long before we had to have her pts. It's hard to know when you have a pigsy gerbie, but it's always worth getting a vet check just in case. That said Bubbles did stop doing things, like running on her wheel, however the vet said that could be because of the excess weight. I guess it just depends if Chicken is behaving any different to normal.
I think removing some of the high fat content out of the food sounds like a reasonable plan if you have the opportunity to make sure Shark still gets some. You don't have to remove them all so that you aren't messing too much with their nutritional intake. You could try it for a week and see if there is any change and reassess then.
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Post by yeti218 on Mar 9, 2021 19:48:26 GMT -8
thank you for your response tanzanyte sorry to hear about your gerbil but thanks for sharing the experience. Yeah I think I’ll monitor it for another week or two before going to a vet. I’m just skeptical that any of my local vets will have enough experience with small animals like these, and whether they can actually do any kind of worthwhile check on such an uncooperative small animal, without using inappropriate force. The other thing is that the weight gain does seem to have an obvious cause. He is always eating! He still digs and chews cardboard and zooms around the playpen. He never was a fan of the wheel. He just ignores all other activities if there’s food to be gathered. Another thing I’m doing is only feeding when Shark is awake, just so Chicken doesn’t have the opportunity to eat all the food while his poor brother sleeps.
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Post by yeti218 on Mar 10, 2021 7:23:45 GMT -8
I made an appointment with a vet for this Friday. They said I could bring Shark in as well so they stay together.
I'm a bit worried, I just dont know how someone can safely examine such a wriggly uncooperative animal.
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Post by tanzanyte on Mar 17, 2021 14:01:58 GMT -8
How is it going with Chicken's weight yeti218 Hopefully you are still managing to give a few treats to Shark on the sly!
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Post by yeti218 on Mar 18, 2021 13:37:10 GMT -8
Chicken is still gaining weight He weighed in at 101 grams yesterday, when he went to the vet a week ago he was at 97 grams. Shark is also gaining weight though, he’s up 3 grams in the same time frame. So I’m thinking whatever I did with the food was the wrong thing to do. The vet suggested I put him on some bland pellets so he may stop gorging himself if the foods not as tasty. I wanted to do a gradual change so I picked out the fatty bits from their regular food (any dried fruit, nuts and pumpkin / sunflower seeds), and then mixed it with some pellets that I had for my hamster, ratio was about 50/50, with the intention to keep increasing the pellet quantity. Im wondering if I should go and buy some different pellets, or just a different mix altogether? What exactly should I be looking for? Just whatever has the lowest fat content? What else should I be considering (fiber/protein content? Main ingredients?)
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Post by Markpd on Mar 19, 2021 12:33:07 GMT -8
Did he check out ok at the vets?
Btw, as an aside, fruit can be quite sugary, I know for people (I would've thought it'd be the same for gerbils?), in whatever form we consume sugars and other carbs, what we don't burn as energy gets converted to fat and stored. Can't help with the rest of your questions I'm afraid.
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Post by yeti218 on Mar 22, 2021 17:41:30 GMT -8
Did he check out ok at the vets? Btw, as an aside, fruit can be quite sugary, I know for people (I would've thought it'd be the same for gerbils?), in whatever form we consume sugars and other carbs, what we don't burn as energy gets converted to fat and stored. Can't help with the rest of your questions I'm afraid. Yeah the vet did a physical exam and found no suggestions of a medical issue. Further diagnostics would have required anesthesia and we decided to try some food changes first before subjecting him to the risks associated with anesthesia. I wrote about it here, but you’ve got the summary so don’t feel obligated to read it all. gerbilforum.proboards.com/thread/34945/vet-expectI don’t give them fruit. I used to give vegetables sometimes but have just been sticking to their diet mix for the last few weeks. I’m now thinking maybe I should try a couple days a week giving them more vegetables and less food, since vegetables are (probably?) lower calorie / fat than seeds and pellets.
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Post by betty on Mar 23, 2021 15:04:54 GMT -8
Yes, dark green veg have more goodness in them than calories (it is things like parnsip, carrot, squash and pumpkin that have higher sugar content so should be avoided or limited on 'diets').
I would also try to stick to the recommended food weight per day for a while - or just under if you are adding veg every day. Overfeeding mixes allows for more weighted selective feeding (they have more opportunity to eat only the tasty high calorie stuff) - so putting only what they are 'aloowed' in there means they have to eat the more boring things too if they are hungry.
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Post by yeti218 on Mar 23, 2021 18:55:07 GMT -8
Yes, dark green veg have more goodness in them than calories (it is things like parnsip, carrot, squash and pumpkin that have higher sugar content so should be avoided or limited on 'diets'). I would also try to stick to the recommended food weight per day for a while - or just under if you are adding veg every day. Overfeeding mixes allows for more weighted selective feeding (they have more opportunity to eat only the tasty high calorie stuff) - so putting only what they are 'aloowed' in there means they have to eat the more boring things too if they are hungry. Thanks for that information Betty, I didn’t realize carrots were so surgary, that’s good to know since that was one of the vegetables I most commonly fed them before the diet. I had been feeding them 1 tbsp each a day, and continued that even when chicken was gaining (I worried feeding less would just result in chicken eating the same and shark eating less). Now that they are on less interesting food, I’ve noticed that Shark has actually gained some weight (he’s at 80 grams now, he was at 75 when I started this thread 2 weeks ago), and I notice more uneaten food around the cage, so I’ve started feeding them a little less. I’m thinking this is just a food issue, although it still possibly may be a medical one. But I feel I should at least ask, do gerbils have growth spurts? I’ve had them 6 months and was told they were 1 year old when I got them, but I’m not sure the previous owner actually knew. Is it possible they’re just reaching their adult size now? I don’t really think this is likely because their weight was fairly steady before this began, but I’m curious enough to ask.
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Post by betty on Mar 24, 2021 4:19:22 GMT -8
Yes, root vegetables are the source of stored energy for a plant - so they always have more colories in them - they are also the source of new veg (tubers/babies) so need loads of stuff in them to start a new family!
Anyway, yes, the boring food means that the calories are more evenly spread, so rather than chunky monkey skimming off all the high nutrient pieces, more of the pieces are the same and so the other gerbil is now accessing some of calories and nutrients he was missing out on before (just by volume). So say on shopping day you scoffed all the nice sweet stuff first and left only the cabbage and crackers for your brother - but now you are both eating healthy stew?
And yes, they can have a size change as they age. Raeaching middle-age in humans is often associated with weight gain so I am sure hormones can affect gerbil size as they mature too.
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Post by Markpd on Mar 24, 2021 10:41:56 GMT -8
yeti218
Hmm, I wouldn't say carrots are 'so sugary', they are low in fact, sure it'll be more than many (any?) greens, but it's not much. As I have to take insulin for my T1 Diabetes I need to carb count to (try) to get the right dose. The (frozen) carrots I get have just 4.3g/100g of carbs (of which is mostly sugar of 4.1g), so quite a low amount. Parsnips are quite a bit higher in the carb count, IIRC the ones I get are about 18g/100 carbs (I don't know the sugar portion... Googled, 4.8g). Squash bag says 6.6g/100 carbs, of which sugars 6.3g, not really what I would call high. Pumpkin carbs is apparently 6.5g/100g with 2.8g being sugar, so very low.
betty did say 'higher sugar content' than greens, rather than high sugar content per se.
betty So even though the relative sugar content of those is low, that would still be an issue for gerbils, if say fed daily?
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Post by betty on Mar 24, 2021 14:40:51 GMT -8
I am only quoting what dieticians around the world will tell you - and many a keto advocate:
When you are comparing foods by specific macros - it is about the portion size not just the percentages.
A food with 99% sugar is fine, say, if you only eat a 1g portion of it - you are technically only eating 1g of sugar. But if you have a food that is 30% sugar, but a portion is 500g you are eating (crap - I hate maths) - 150g of sugar?
I would imagine a gerbil-sized portion of carrot is heavier than a gerbil-sized portion of kale - and so if it already contains nearly 4 times more sugar anyway per 100g - then that heavier portion also contains more actual sugar?
Anyway - you can offer your gerbils veg every day if you want - but it should always be varied rather than the same thing until it runs out. So if you were feeding say 5 different vegetables every week and one or two days are root vegetables (or other non-root vegetables that happen to be red, orange or yellow (all signs of potential higher levels of sugar)) then it isn't going to make a massive difference to anything.
However, as with anything that is given regularly over and above all else - it starts to lose it's advantages because then anything it has a lot of becomes a lot more - and anything it is missing is always missed.
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Post by yeti218 on Mar 25, 2021 5:14:04 GMT -8
The vegetables they most commonly get are peppers, broccoli, carrots and cauliflower.
They infrequently get tomato and iceberg lettuce.
It's still early days but chickens weight might be starting to plateau. Hes been at 101 grams for the last week.
I'm going to keep on this food mix and ratio for a few more weeks to be sure, and then will be hopefully looking at more long term feeding solutions. The current pellets they're on is fine to test a diagnosis for a few weeks, but I dont think its healthy enough for a lifetime.
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Post by Markpd on Mar 25, 2021 12:14:05 GMT -8
betty Yea got ya, makes sense. I think I'm ok on the carrot front with my boys, they only get it once or twice a week.
Btw, I wasn't disputing that they are a higher sugar content than greens, more the comment afterwards by yeti saying 'so sugary', just a little misinterpritated
PS I hate maths too!
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