Hamster Treats from HK (post one)

I spend quite a lot of the money I earn on my pets and I do love going through pet shops looking for toys and treats they might like. The problem is, I've been to every pet shop near me and was bored with the same old same old. So when I went to Hong Kong last summer I was extremely excited to see what sort of hamster goodies they had.

The amazing thing about HK is that in Mong Kwok you get a street full of pet shops. There is one street that goes by the name of Goldfish Street (this is a direct translation from Cantonese so it may not be accurate) that only sold fish and aquarium products. There isn't a street called pet street but there is an area that has many pet shops. I'm not too happy about how the pets were looked after in these pet shops as they had as many as 15 dwarf hamsters in one cage. Some even had puppies placed into pens that gave them only enough room to turn around. I would not recommend buying an animal from these shops. However, there are shops that stock a lot of food. The variety of treats and foods was immense. These shops bought their stock from Japan and I was quite spoilt for choice.

They stocked almost any form of dried fruit possible and a big variety of dried vegetables. I wonder if fresh fruit and veg are pricier in Japan? I've seen little tubs of dried apple and pineapple in some pet shops in UK but rarely things like dried strawberries.

Dried Strawberries: These were around 20hkd which is roughly £1-£1.50. They were freeze dried hard lumps of strawberries. Once opened, these would soften slightly so it doesn't stay fresh for long unless you stick it into an air tight container. To be honest, my Coshu was not very impressed with these but then again, fresh strawberries aren't his idea of a good dessert. I would imagine sugar content would make these an occasional treat.

Dried Apple: Same as above really, apart from these got scarily soft after being opened! My hammy liked these a bit more than strawberries. You can get these in health shops and some supermarkets around UK for human consumption and as long as there is no other ingredients apart from apple they would be safe for hamsters. If a preservative is used, please do check it is OK for your pet!

Dried mixed vegetables: This is something I've not seen in UK for hamsters. If you know anywhere that does something similar, please do share! I cannot read Japanese so from the packaging it appeared to have carrot, some kind of squash and/or marrow, and two other things I could not identify. The store owner said it was hamster safe and my one loved it. It looked tasty enough to eat. I did have something similar when I was in HK, a shop called Muji (coincidentally is full of Japanese products too) had packets of vegetable crisps but with added salt. That was pure yumminess. This was more expensive at 30+hkd (over £2).

 I bought three other different types on treats on that holiday and those were quite bizarre. Its not the usual stuff you see in the UK. I'll talk about and post piccies of hamster fruit jelly pots, dried fish for rodents and peanut flavour chewy treats in my next post.