So I've seen sites that say it's okay for hamsters to eat celery and many others that say it's harmful. I use to give my hamster celery all the time before I saw this and I don't know if I should continue or stop. And are celery leaves alright?
Hi, I’ve been unsure about celerey, too :)
The climate of opinion is that it can be fed, though there are also people who say it’s dangerous. But I can’t find clear arguments with a scientific background on why it should be harmful. These are the only facts I can find:
Celery can have a diuretic effect on humans. Hamsters don’t drink much and a diuretic vegetable could draw water from them - But I can’t find sources that verify that it has the same effect on hamsters, only some people claiming that their hammi pees more after eating celery. Even if this is true, as long as the hamster has enough water this should be no problem - And I’ve not found a single person saying that a hamster ate enough celery to cause problems.
Celery roots contain comparatively much nitrate. Tubers contain all the matters that surround them in the dirt - including harmful substances. But the amount isn’t higher than in carrots, eggplants and zucchini and nitrate is harmless in low doses. If you feed celery roots, try to feed home-grown or those from organic farms, where you can be sure that they don’t fertilize much. The amount of nitrate is much higher in all kinds of salad, red beet and mangold.
I think that celery is fine, I feed it every few weeks and my hammi likes it. To be safe, you shouldn’t feed celery roots daily, only if you can be sure that they’re not fertilized.
You can feed either celery sticks or roots with the leaves, they’re harmless and tasteful. Like all veggies they should be washed well before given, if you feed roots, you should shack them (That’s where most of the nitrate is in). I hope that helped a bit :)
If anyone has proven facts about if celery should be fed and why / why not I’d be happy to read more about this!