Let Em Forage!

Feeding your critter the foods that will keep it healthy is important, but how you feed your small exotic pet could be just as important as what you feed them. While a spacious and interesting habitat, toys and bedding material all offer important phychological enrichment for exotic pets, mealtime can also be a great way to keep your exotics' lives interesting, stimulating and active. Grazers, foragers and hunters all spend signigicant energy finding their food in the wild, so making small exotics work, even a little, to get their dinner can more closely mimic the natural way they would eat. Providing forage toys can stimulate these natural instincts. Forage toys are placed in the cage, food nuggets or healthy treats are hidden in the forage toys, and your pet exotics must fine a way to remove the food or treat. Making mealtime a challange is expecially important for highly active animals like Sugar gliders. If you change the location of their foods or hide them in forage toys, small exotics will be more stimulated. Sensible treats include hay and greens for grazers, seeds and wholegrain products for grain eaters, and a wide variety of healthy fruits nad vegetables, and in some cases live or dried insects, eggs, and meat for carnivores. All animals need nutritional, mental and physical stimulation, but the great thing is you can tie all these things together through nutrition.