Treat Question

I will start by saying that I know that the safe treats are rose hips, whole oats, shredded wheat, and Cheerios. I know raisins are bad as well as any treats that are high in sugar. I also realize treats are not necessary but I want to be able to give them on occasion in limited quantity. My question is this I have seen treats such as dried papaya, carrots, and sweet potato for sell to give as treats. Is papaya a no no because of the sugar content. I see that some people do give it but other say no it is not necessary. Can I give it on occasion. Then what about carrots and sweet potatoes I know vegetables are not recommended but what if they are dried. Will they tolerate dried carrots and sweet potatoes or will it make them sick. Would you consider sweet potato to be high in sugar. Please don't give me the pat answer that treats are not necessary and we need to avoid treats with high sugar. I really want an educational answer and a variety of opinions as to your thoughts. I have done extensive research so know the ins and outs of the treat issue but want a range of opinions. Thank you

Some people believe that giving papaya will lessen the chances of a chin getting a hair ball. Since it's never been satisfactorily proven that chins even get hairballs, I see no purpose to giving that sugary treat.

I can't give you an "educational" answer in regards to your question. I can only give you the voice of experience. In 10 years I have had 1 case of bloat and that was in an extremely ill chin. I don't offer treats, and I believe, therefore, that I don't have a high occurrence of bloat. Pet owners have a large occurrence of bloat because they insist on offering a variety of treats. To me, that's educational enough. Just because it isn't in a research paper doesn't mean that this kind of comment doesn't have merit.

Besides the sick chin bloat and stasis I have dealt with, the one time, many years ago, some from CNQ may remember, I bought some rabbit cookies from the local rescue display at the Mom and Pop pet store, the cookies were supposed to be rabbit safe. They smelled sweet like apples but HEY they are rabbit safe. Most of my chins have never had anything sweet, the others it was years. So before bedtime I gave all 11 a cookie. The next morning the nightmare scene in the chin room, Tito was unresposive on his side and severely bloated on deaths door , Rocco and Guido also were lethargic with bloat, Frank and Beezy had gurgly tummies, the whole lot had loose poo. 5 chins rushed to the emergency vet with me feeling like the lowest pond scum on the planet, it was a hard lesson learned what feeding something sweet can do to a chin, I tasted the cookies after the fact and they might as well have been oatmeal human cookies.

Thanks for the input thus far. I definitely don't want bloat so that is why I want to be careful with treats and sugar content. Is the sugar content higher in papaya than it is in raisins. Do you think sweet potato has a high sugar content. Are dried carrots ok to give or is there the hole bloat issue that as well? And thanks Tunes your years of experience does account for something.

If you introduce sugar into the perfectly balanced microbial enviroment in the chinchilla digestive tract you can produce a bacterial bloom and the byproduct of that is gas, which leads to bloat and illeus if left untreated. Sugar is sugar as far as the bacteria are concerned and it makes "good eats".

Ok so let me ask you this and I am not trying to be stupid here. I want to evaluate what is said and put it into perspective as the best way to feed my Chins and not harm them. I got them from their breeder 2 weeks ago and the breeder was feeding crap food called "SunSeed" (why a breeder would do this is beyond me but I guess he is not as educated as he should be). Anyway "SunSeed" has these little dried papaya and banana chunks in it so I would think my Chins have been exposed to a little bit of a higher sugar content because of this bad food. I am gradually switching them over to Mazuri currently. I know that there are some benifits to feeding papaya but this is debated. If their digestive tracks are used to a little sugar and I wanted to give a piece of papaya or sweet potato or carrot every so often will they be less likely to get bloat...diarrahea...etc.

Carrots are very high in sugar. They even of it if giving your dog carrots of their sugar content.

swan.dragon said:

Are dried carrots ok to give or is there the hole bloat issue that as well?

Click to expand...

Drying a fruit or vegetable just removes water and makes it smaller. It does not remove sugar so the content of the dried would be the same as the whole (or more if you gave equal volume).

Sweet potato contains about .113 grams/ml (weird units but I could not find how much a cup of sweet potatos weighs).

Carrots have a higher natural sugar content than all other vegetables with the exception of beets. They have .04 g sugar/g carrot.

This is in comparison to raisins which have .09g/100g and it less, but not much.

So, no I would not consider them much safer than raisins.

This whole discussion got me to thinking about what the sugar content of these foods are so I did an Internet search. Here is what I have found. It is pretty lengthy with a lot of links but it was I needed to get the info and I hope it benefits others.

http://www.karlloren.com/diet/p35.htm you have to go to almost the bottom to get to the dried fruit it also gives a good idea of what the sugar content is for raisins compared to other sugary foods

http://www.thepaleodiet.com/nutritional_tools/fruits_table.html Another table of suger content...Papaya is a little lower than Raisin but look at the sugar content of a lifesaver...it is almost the same as a Raisin and not much more than Papaya...I wouldn't feed a lifesaver to a Chin so maybe this answers the question straight up

http://nutrition.about.com/od/askyournutritionist/f/dried_fruit.htm good info on why dried fruits have more and gives a good analysis on raisins

http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/whattoeat/a/whatfruit.htm good analysis of sugar content of fruits for low to high. Not sure if this is whole or dried?
Papaya is low to medium.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1671662/eat_papaya_for_good_health.html?cat=5 Info on the benifits of papaya it is geared towards humans but I think some of the info on benifits can be applied across the board.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin/list_nut_edit.pl Sugar content of dried carrot...much lower than raisin and papaya but still kind of high

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin/list_nut_edit.pl Sugar content of sweet potato but it is raw not dried so for dried it would be higher Raw carrot is 4.74 Raw Sweet Potato is 4.18 so it would stand to reason the sugar content of dried sweet potato is about the same as dried carrot

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin/list_nut_edit.pl Sugar content of raw papaya about 3 gm more than raw carrots/sweet potato

http://www.wolframalpha.com/entities/foods/dried_carrot/mu/5w/hl/ Dried carrot has about the same as dried papaya. You have to convert some of these things to get an accurate representations.

http://www.food.com/recipe/oven-dried-sweet-potato-chips-148328 Dried Sweet Potato has the lowest sugar content...interesting

Well these searches were beneficial and informative to me to help me decide that dried papaya may have to much sugar but the dried veggie question is still on the slate as they are lower in sugar but is it safe to give dried veggies outside of the sugar content question. Hope this info was beneficial for other too.

To GorrilaATA

"Drying a fruit or vegetable just removes water and makes it smaller. It does not remove sugar so the content of the dried would be the same as the whole (or more if you gave equal volume)."

This is mostly accurate but if you compare say 1T of Papaya to 1T of dried Papaya the 1T of dried Papaya would have more sugar becks there is much more concentrated than the raw form plus I forgot to take into account many times dried fruit has added sugar. Here is a link that explains this http://nutrition.about.com/od/askyournutritionist/f/dried_fruit.htm

Your comparison plus my comparisons has shown me that these treat sources are not that much better when compared to raisins and sugar content

No fruits or veggies dried or fresh for chins is the best rule of thumb!

i would definitely avoid the carrots & sweet potato. i have dried organic papaya. not all chins can tolerate it. the amount i give 1 or 2 or my boys is the size of 1/4 of a pencil eraser or smaller. i give it when i have to give meds or if their poop is hard. not daily.
one of my boys got extremely soft poop, so he is not allowed to have it at all.
i also have organic goji berries that i sometimes give my boys. they are very low in sugar and i split 1 small berry in half.
other than that i stick with organic herbs, crushed rosehips, rose petals, hibiscus flowers, old fashioned oats and unsugared shredded wheat. the most popular treats are apple wood sticks & their nightly 1/2 of a shredded wheat.

Michelle

Thanks for the info on treats. I use rose hips, Cheerios, Shredded Wheat, and oats. I wanted to introduce something a little more exciting on occasion. I will hold off on these dried fruits and veggies. Maybe will use papaya when I do hair ring check on boys or if they get hard poos. And then only if they tolerate it. I will make sure to get natural dried papaya without preservatives or added color. Where do you get goji berries these are supposed to be very good for the immune system.

i buy all my herbs, flowers, rosehips & berries from:

www.mountainroseherbs.com

all organic. excellant customer service. very environmentally conscious. product is super fresh and pretty fair priced. i used order about $50 worth when i order and it lasts a good 6 months.

Great thanks for the link to the website. The prices due seem resonable. I might even order stuff for myself.