Good treats/Whimzees for chins?

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Alexandra2000

New member
Joined
May 5, 2018
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3
I work at a pet store and we sell a vegan dental chew called Whimzees. They are marketed as a dog treat however I know customers who give them to their hamsters. I understand that chins have very different digestive tracts than a hamster but I figured it would be an awesome treat/toy if they could eat them. I just am having a hard time figuring out if the ingredients are safe.
The ingredients are;
potato starch, glycerin, lecithin, malt extract, and yeast.

Thanks.
 
Well right off the bat with the first ingredient, potatoes, those are not safe for chinchillas to eat. The other one that sticks out is the malt extract, it's grain starch turned into sugar, then those sugars are extracted and concentrated. Chins can't digest sugars very well, and there is already sugars in a normal pellet and hay diet. I really don't know about the other ingredients, but I would think yeast would also be dangerous, I would think it could cause bloat.

Chinchillas should not have any, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, processed human food, or animal products (milk, bone, eggs, hide, meat, etc).
Because others have argued about it, in very very tiny amounts certain fruits, veggies, nuts, and seeds are ok (as in it likely wont kill them and might not get sick), on rare occasions, but they aren't good for them.
 
The only good commercial treats I've found for much of any small animals are some horse treats and maybe some of oxbow's products but at a much higher price than any other source of treats. You have to avoid the horse treats marketed basically more toward pet owners that have fruit and vegetable ingredients with added sugars or sugar containing ingredients right at the top of the list. Plain grains, flax, beet pulp, and no more molasses than is added to some pellets can be found.

Honestly I would not even look at treats in a pet store. Practically every company adds something I would prefer not to feed my chinchillas even occasionally (or usually any other small animal). Pet stores and pet companies do treats very badly. There are plenty of good foods pretty much as is like rose hips or dried flowers that don't need combined with crappy ingredients or there are some simplistic grain based treats that are about like feeding plain human cereals. Of course it's even easier to grab some no sugar added, no fruit added, simple ingredient human cereal if you want a grain based treat instead of dried plant parts.
 
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