How to Feed a Pet Squirrel

Feeding a pet squirrel is a small part of their care requirements but it's an important one. Ensuring that your pet squirrel is fed a nutritional diet helps keep your squirrel healthy while in captivity. Feed your pet squirrel a varied diet full of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds and help it become accustomed to its new home.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Research your breed of squirrel to get an idea of what their optimum diet entails. Many squirrels thrive on the same basic diet, but different species may have special feeding requirements.

2. Feed your pet squirrel vegetables. Mushrooms, dried corn, carrots, celery, green beans, and romaine lettuce make for healthy additions to your pet squirrel's diet.

3. Include fruits in your pet squirrel's diet. Apples and bananas are favorites among squirrels but they often eat other types of fruits, too.

4. Offer your pet squirrel nuts and seeds. Parrot food contains many of the nuts and seeds that appeal to squirrels. Consider buying a box the next time you're at a pet store and feed some to your pet squirrel.

5. Add supplements to your pet squirrel's diet. Powdered calcium can be sprinkled on top of your squirrel's food to help maintain its calcium levels.

6. Provide items to help keep your pet squirrel's teeth healthy. Squirrels need items like sterilized large bones, twigs, tree bark, leaves, cuttlebone, pumice stone, roots and pine cones to gnaw on and make them feel comfortable in captivity.

7. Have fresh water for your pet squirrel to drink at all times. You can add a hamster's water bottle to the side of your squirrel's habitat so that your squirrel has a continuous water supply or you can provide water in a heavy dish that can't be tipped over.

Tips & Warnings

• If your pet squirrel is recovering from an illness or injury, consider chopping up the food into smaller, more manageable sizes for them.
• Wash all food and water dishes daily so that the possibility of contamination is minimized.
• Do not feed your pet squirrel processed food that humans eat. Squirrels need to be fed food that they would easily find in their natural habitats. Feeding a pet squirrel processed food could be detrimental to their health and could lead to addiction.

[lillysmom]

on 3/11/2009 thanks 4skwerlz

[4skwerlz]

on 3/10/2009 The diet recommended in this answer is deficient in protein, vitamin D (found only in meat, dairy, eggs), calcium, and B vitamins. At The Squirrel Board, we see many, many squirrels fed this diet that show up with fur problems and metabolic bone disease. The diet MUST consist of 75% rodent blocks in addition to the foods listed here. Since most squirrels won't eat commercial rodent blocks, we have developed a healthy "squirrel block" that squirrels love. For more info, please visit http://thesquirrelboard.com/forums/index.php or http://healthyblocks.com.