Mazuri BHA

[Lil'Monster lover4life]

Ugh I typed a whole thing and poof darn phone messed up my sign in :-/ basically ordered Mazuri with the vet recommendation and now I see in some posts about BHA. Now that I ordered online is this food bad for my hedgie??? I posted a whole article in the section about (health and wellness I think THt was the right one ) titles is it mites or mites?? Basically describing our whole adventure so far with our newest baby in the family LiL' monster I call her. Anyways I read this food could be bad , I am currently using the sunseed brand because she was having nasty mucus green poop and after 7 days of antibiotics still flip flop with poop issues once I switched from royal canine to the sunseed in about 2 days her poop is dark brown solid and lol like normal hedgie poop ! Yay! But now I see they say this sunseed is not a good option nor is the BHA in this Mazuri. As I want my baby hedgie to be healthy all the material I read can get overwhelming. Thanks in advance I'm sure I'll be posting a lot on here!!

 

[smhufflepuff]

Agreed, there is a lot of information out there and it can feel pretty overwhelming at times.

Sounds like she's been on a combination of Royal Canin and Sunseed and you're thinking about Mazuri?

The short version on RC is that ingredients aren't the best and (generally, depending on which version) the %fat is too high. It's fine for the short term, especially for babies who need little pieces and can put those fat calories into growing. The short version on Sunseed is, again, ingredients not the best. It's also not the worst. So, again, it will be okay for the short term. I don't really have much info on Mazuri, so I'll refrain from comment on it.

Given that she's having tummy issues, I'd do my best to stay pretty consistent with her food for the short term. That is, regardless of whether Mazuri is "good" or "bad," I'd hold off on it until things settle down (unless, of course, she's having issues with the ingredients in the RC or Sunseed so that she has to switch away from them). The other thing I would do is get her some probiotics.

Antibiotics kill off the "bad" bacteria that make her sick and the "good" bacteria she needs in her gut to properly process food. You can go to the drug store/grocery store, get some acidophilus, and sprinkle it over her kibbles. It'll help restore the "good" bacteria. You want to give it opposite from when you give the antibiotics... for example, if you give her antibiotics at 9am and 9pm, you'll want to give her the acidophilus at 3am and 3pm. Of course, that's the idea... reality often interferes with that. First, she'll probably be asleep at 3pm and you're probably at work/school/wherever... so I tend to skip that. Then 3am she'll be running and you're fast asleep... so, by sprinkling it over her kibble that she'll eat over the course of the night, you can be fairly certain that 3am is taken care of. There's another product you can find in pet stores called "bene-bac" - it's a gel that contains probiotics. If you really wanted to ensure that she was getting it on time, you could squeeze out a tiny bit (think like water droplet size) and give that to her. Veterinarians can also give you the official prescription version that's like bene-bac in a giant oral syringe. I had that once for one of my little ones.

I hope the antibiotics take care of whatever bad mojo has been going on for her!!

 

[akane]

For it's purpose Mazuri is a pretty good food but really you are better off with good quality (not royal canin) cat food. Preferably 2-3 that work for your hedgehog but of course add them one at a time starting in low amounts. It'll be cheaper to buy it locally for a better quality than any hedgehog specific food. Even buying off petfooddirect after searching google for their latest coupons would probably be cheaper. Vets don't know much about nutrition really. All vet classes in nutrition are funded by the major pet food companies and exotics are even worse. They tend to rely on the companies to know what makes a good food. Just because it has a hedgehog label and some advertisement doesn't make it a good hedgehog food.

With stomach issues I would suggest wellness and diamond brands which include the basic diamond foods plus diamond naturals, chicken soup, and taste of the wild. California natural used to be a good limited ingredient food for sensitive stomachs but it was bought out and the quality is questioned now. Most good pet stores dropped it for brands like Fromm. Chicken soup for the cat lover's soul is ranked pretty high on hedgehog food lists. Slightly lower is diamond naturals indoor cat formula. Wellness healthy weight and wellness indoor weight are the formulas of that brand listed for hedgehogs. Taste of the wild is a high quality grain free food that is surprisingly cost effective but it's a little high in fat for hedgehogs long term without mixing with a low fat food like Natural Balance duck and pea. Natural balance is another possibly good option for a sensitive fully grown hedgehog. I would not feed it as the sole feed to growing or breeding hedgehogs. We use the natural balance to counter high fat in blue buffalo wilderness kibble and the treats of canned totw we give.

 

[Lil'Monster lover4life]

Ok so my moms hedgie was on Royal Canin and I've read "the list" there's a lot of diff brands. Her hedgie has never a single day in his life ,needed the vet or had any issue with green poop or what not ,surprisingly . Now I myself researched everything before getting our hedgie and I've seem to in 3 weeks come across a lot of issues that's hedgies have. Starting w the green poop and so on (always something)now I know how to introduce the new foods a little at a time and so forth but as soon as I introduced her to sun seed which is insectivore food she immediately had textbook hedgie poop!!!! So again it may not be the best but the vet recommended Mazuri as quality food for her. As it has been delivered to our door I didn't introduce it yet at all because I dont want to keep changing although I will prob try next week since the question was the BHA issues ..now she was givin the antibiotics along with probiotics already . So I'm assuming that the BHA isn't going to kill my hedgie or they wouldn't be able to sell it and why would I want to kill her! Also why would I want to mix hedgie food with cat food if the hedgie food has everything she needs! I have given her a few tiny bits of chicken which she seemed to love and look for when I moved my hand in the cage to a diff spot, and she eats gently out of my hand . As a new owner I read read read- then when I found this site I post post post my experiences. Although it's hard to keep up with replies because I don't read my email much that says there is an alert so when I sign in here I kind of browse through and ck the links to see if anything is new', I wish there was a message that said u have 3 new replies or something to the nature of allowing us to know as soon as we sign on here . If I'm missing something as I don't know the site yet that well please let me know thanks hope all my posting gives a round about scenario to my adventure so far. Thanks for the info always appreciated and nice to know I don't need to call the vet every day with questions that I see answered by several people on here with the same answers.