This thread or
this one will show you how to post images.
I've put your ingredients list into the database and I'll go through each red value and let you know what I think.
A common theme you will see below is that many of the "target values" are very cautious estimates and many are probably higher than necessary. In a future update of the database I will try to revise some of them. While on my own copy of the database I have changed many of these figures to lower ones that I still personally believe are ok, on the public copy that anyone can download and use, I have found it difficult to balance caution (not wanting to mislead anyone) and "realisticness" so often erred on the side of caution.
I think you should have more than 4 different flour seeds/grains. I would suggest a minimum of 6 but ideally more.
Celery seeds and fennel seeds look great on paper but in practice I found my gerbils refused to eat them. So I might suggest looking for some other options.
- Your fat at 17% is a bit higher than I would have expected for a 60:40 mix. It's probably just down to your choices of seeds. It might be fine but you would want to keep an eye on your gerbils' weights (especially when they have finished growing) to see whether that kind of fat level suits them or not.
- Calcium at 288 is a lot lower that the suggested figure of 650 but on my own copy of the database I've recently been working with a slightly lower minimum because 650 was so difficult to attain and because some of my research suggested it might be higher than necessary. Commercial diets have added calcium which is how they can have much higher levels. It's a challenge to get much calcium from whole foods only.
Different nutrients all interact with each other as well and you can't look at any of them in isolation. More of one nutrient might increase or decrease the requirement for another nutrient. Research studies on other rodents suggest that around 500mg/100g calcium is sufficient, but in those studies the rodents are usually getting a supplemented diet containing Vitamin D which improves calcium absorption, so we can't necessarily generalise the results of those studies to a homemade diet which might not contain Vitamin D (and that's a whole topic in itself). We could also look at the calcium levels in popular commercial diets which people have fed successfully for many years, but those also tend to contain Vitamin D. Phosphorus "cancels out" calcium to some extent, so if you have more phosphorus in your mix, you need more calcium to balance it out.
What I can say is that there are popular "German-style" diets such as Rodipet which are totally whole-food-based, so won't contain any meaningful Vitamin D and in the case of Rodipet, only has about 150mg/100g calcium, and many people have been feeding those apparently without
overt issues. But then again, how many gerbils get detailed autopsies and medical testing to determine their cause of death? So we don't really know to what extent diet may or may not contribute to the various diseases our gerbils get.
Gerbils have been studied so little that our understanding of their nutritional needs is extremely limited. This (along with the limitations and challenges explained in my notes) means that there is some risk inherent in creating a homemade diet, which you mitigate at best you can. But sometimes you have to take an educated and risk-conscious guess. Making a homemade mix certainly is never the easy option.
To get back to your diet, I wouldn't go as low as 288. If you add some sesame seeds and some calci worms you should be able to get it to at least 450 or so which is better.
- Your phosphorus is 436 which I'm sure is fine. The target of 450 is actually rather high and will probably be lower in any future update of the database.
- Your sodium is 25, which is about average for a homemade mix. Rodipet gerbil food has 26. The same caveats about lack of study, risk, and educated guesses as with calcium apply here but with the added reassurance that sodium deficiency is more of a short term thing (it will appear within a few months). Feeding some dried and fresh vegetables will increase sodium a little.
- Selenium at 15 is probably ok. 20 was another rather high estimate.
- Thiamin is 0.57 which is just barely lower than 0.6 (which is already a high estimate) so that's fine.
- The database says 4.5 for niacin because that was what some German gerbil publication I found suggested. But I don't know on what evidence it said that. I think 3 may be a more realistic target. Your mix might still be a bit low at 2.3 but I think you can easily fix that by choosing some new grains. Buckwheat is relatively high in niacin and my gerbils love it. Have a look down the ingredients list and find some seeds that are higher in niacin that you could add.
- The target of 0.81 for pantothenic was an extremely cautious one and I don't think you need to aim for it. You have 0.55 which should be fine.
- I would try to get B6 a little higher ideally.
- Don't worry about biotin because so many of the ingredients are missing data for their biotin content that the calculated value of 3.93 is completely unreliable.
- By the time you've added the calci worms, and if you're also feeding regular leafy vegetables, folate will be fine.
- Choline is a tricky one. Apparently some study (which I can't trace to read it myself) said that 230mg/100g is optimal for gerbils (to prevent fatty liver). But that's basically impossible to obtain from a normal diet. And then I considered that I don't think commercial gerbil foods are being supplemented with choline (none of them say so on the packaging) and gerbils don't appear to be dying from liver disease all the time. One study on rats found they needed 50mg/100g to prevent fatty liver but they were being fed a ridiculous diet of 38% sucrose and 34% protein so it's not applicable to the context of a normal diet. So to be honest I just ignore choline.
- Vitamin B12 is also tricky. The rather high estimate of 0.74 was based on the previously mentioned German publication whose sources I cannot trace. But it seems to me that you'd have to feeding a diet of something like 75% insects to achieve that! So I'm not really sure. Once again, I have deferred to the presumption that many gerbils have eaten unsupplemented diets such as Rodipet and Bunny throughout their lives, and seem to be ok. I think you should always feed some animal protein rather than just vegetable protein though.
- Once you've added the dried carrot, Vitamin A will be fine. Dried carrot contains very high levels or beta-carotene which gerbils are very efficient at converting to Vitamin A.
- Vitamin E does appear to be quite low. I would recommend having a look at the list of oil seeds and choosing some that are higher in Vitamin E to include. Almonds are also a good source.
- For Vitamin D, see the part of the calcium discussion where I wrote about diets such as Rodipet which don't contain it.
- For Vitamin K, as mentioned earlier in this thread, feed some leafy vegetables and you'll be fine.
- In terms of the amino acids, you'll see several are red. Those target values for "growth" are based on what caused really young gerbils (3-4 weeks old) to grow the fastest, so they are optimal figures but not minimums required for health. By the time you bring gerbils home, they will be a bit older and not growing quite as fast as a 3-week-old gerbil would be, so you don't need to hit those figures exactly. I think your amino acids are fine, especially considering you haven't added insects yet.
Well that's it
I know it's a huge amount to read but hopefully it will help. Remember this is just my opinions based on my research. It's very helpful to do your own research and read around the topic as much as possible because more understanding helps you to know what you might be able to overlook and what's really important. For example I don't care much about the exact amount of fibre in my mix, but I would never go below 140 for magnesium because there is specific research on gerbils to suggest that magnesium levels under 139g/100g can cause seizures.
I don't think there's much nutritional difference between brown and golden flaxseeds so I only added nutritional data for flaxseeds "in general".
Please don't apologise for asking questions. We all have to start somewhere and we're happy to answer them