Gerbil Food

A good gerbil food should contain exactly the right balance of nutrients, vitamins and minerals that gerbils need to stay healthy. Gerbils are omnivores, which means that their food should contain a good source of natural protein, such as peas. Added linseed can be beneficial to support a healthy skin and coat.

Burgess Hamster, Gerbil & Mouse Complete Food contains small nuggets, designed for little mouths, that prevent selective feeding. This can be a problem with muesli-style food where the animal picks out the sweet, high sugar elements of the diet and leaves the nutritious and fibre rich elements that they need to stay healthy.

Gerbils are diurnal, which means they are active during the daytime, although they enjoy frequent snoozes throughout the day. It’s a good idea to get into a regular feeding routine, perhaps providing your gerbils with their rations for the day each morning.

Scatter their gerbil food pellets around their accommodation. This encourages natural foraging behaviour – and will prevent your gerbil gang from squabbling over who has access to the feeding bowl!

It’s essential that you only feed your gerbils with the amount of food they need each day –around a tablespoon of specially-formulated gerbil nuggets, depending on their environment and how active they are. To help you, there are on-pack feeding guidelines you can follow.

Be aware that these small rodents love to hoard their gerbil food. They don’t have cheek pouches like hamsters, but these expert diggers and tunnellers can carry food back and forth to their underground store very quickly to stock up, often working together to speed the process up, so don’t be tempted to feed them more than they need.

As well as quality gerbil pellets, you should provide constant access to clean drinking water in a drinking bottle with a metal sipper tube.

Gerbils love to nibble and munch, you can give them feeding hay along with some untreated softwood such as hawthorn, hazelnut, pear, poplar or apple wood to chew to keep their teeth healthy.

Chewing, gnawing and shredding stuff is a natural gerbil behaviour, so, in addition to gerbil food and hay, ensure you provide a variety of things for them to get their teeth into such as cardboard, coconut shells, banana leaves, hay bars, pumice stone and seagrass.

In addition to nutrition-packed gerbil nuggets and feeding hay with hedgerow herbs, you can also provide your gerbils with safe, fresh vegetables, fruit and herbs a few times a week in small amounts – but be aware that too much fresh food will give your gerbils runny tummies.

PDSA advises that the following fruits, vegetables and herbs are suitable for gerbils:

• Small slices or cubes of carrot, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, chicory, spinach, sweet peppers, cucumber, cress and courgette
• A small handful of fresh herbs such as basil, sage, parsley and coriander
• A sliver of fruit such as apple, pear, peach and melon

The RSPCA recommends steering clear of the following foods:

• Citrus fruits
• Grapes, rhubarb, onions and garlic as they are all poisonous to rodents
• Avoid excessive amounts of certain seeds (such as sunflower) as they are fatty and can cause obesity. Pumpkin seeds are a healthier treat.

If your furry friends haven’t eaten Burgess nuggets before, you can safely transition their gerbil diet over a period of 7-10 days by gradually reducing the old food and replacing it with Burgess Hamster, Gerbil & Mouse Complete Food.

In the first few days, measure out your gerbils’ normal food intake for the day. Take out a small amount and replace with the same amount of the new nuggets. Mix them together so that your gerbils eat a combination of the two.

Each day, slightly reduce their old food, and replace it with slightly more of their new gerbil food. At the end of the transition period, your gerbils should be eating their new nuggets happily with no issues!

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