Complementing an staple food?

[amura]

According to this guide here, protein should be about 12% of the staple food of an adult gerbil. More for breeding adults.
And according to Moonstone Gerbils here corn should not be in the top 3 ingredients.

I bought a mix for my (still young) gerbil, and it's got 16.5% protein. And corn is the first ingredient.
So not ideal, right?

I'm posting the whole nutritional info here:

COMPOSITION
grains (maize 17%), derivatives of vegetable origin, vegetables (peas 12%, red pepper 2%, carrots 2%), seeds, fruit (banana 1%, raisins 1%), vegetable protein extracts, insects (mealworms 4%), nuts, minerals, yeasts, herbs, oils and fats, calendula, FOS, MOS, grape seed, algae, yucca

ANALYTICAL CONSTITUENTS
protein 16.5%, fat content 7.0%, crude fibre 7.5%, crude ash 6.0%, calcium 0.8%, phosphorus 0.45%

ADDITIVES/KG

NUTRITIONAL ADDITIVES
vitamin A 10950 IU, vitamin D3 1450 IU, vitamin E 74 mg, 3b103 (iron) 91 mg, 3b202 (iodine) 2 mg, E4 (copper) 10 mg, 3b502 (manganese) 77 mg, 3b603 (zinc) 72 mg, E8 (selenium) 0.22 mg, 3b815 (selenium) 0.28 mg

TECHNOLOGICAL ADDITIVES
antioxidants

Is there any way I can add something to this mixture to make it healthier? Let's say I add some oats, for example?
Any advice?

[LilyandDaisy]

16.5% protein is good for a young gerbil.

Your food looks like the Versele-Laga Gerbil mix? I fed that for a little while. Most of the grains are actually in pellet form in which case I'm not sure that the type of grain really matters too much. I'm not entirely sure why corn is considered so bad but it is a cheap grain that's often predominant in lower quality foods (along with sunflower seeds and peanuts which are both fine per se) so maybe that's why. If you want to improve it you could mix in some additional grains and seeds up to about 25% of the total mix (because you don't want to unbalance it). Ideas of things you could add would be:

- Oats
- Barley
- Millet
- Buckwheat
- Sorghum/milo
- Sesame seeds
- Hemp seeds
- Flaxseeds

These don't necessarily make it healthier as such because the food itself is balanced and fortified, but they add enrichment and variety.

Alternatively you could mix in an additional more varied food (or switch entirely). Personally I'm a big fan of the Bunny mixes for gerbils. They have a gerbil mix which isn't always easy to find but their Syrian and dwarf hamster mixes are easy to find online in most European countries and they're good for gerbils too. It looks like you can buy Bunny Gerbil from Zooplus in Spain though. My gerbils really like the Bunny mixes.

[amura]

Yes, that's the brand. So it's not that bad then? That's a relief!
Maybe instead of trying to "fix" the mix, I could simply give him a little bit of one of those ingredients every once in a while.

And thanks for the brand recomendation.
I still have plenty of this package left, but I'll certainly check in more detail for the next one.