Hermit Crabs Eat Millet Spray Seed and it's a Fantastic Healthy Snack!
Hermit Crabs love to forage for food and snacks, it’s part of their nature and one of their primary activities in the wild. They find food along ocean shorelines, in mangroves, within dense beachside vegetation and up in trees.
Hermit crabs also dig for seed, which is a healthy snack. There are lots of types of seeds that hermit crabs will eat. But when you place a millet seed spray (the long natural branch filled with seeds), there is an added bonus!
In addition to snacking on the seeds themselves, hermit crabs also LOVE the mundane activity of picking seeds off the spray using their pincers.
Though millet seed isn’t a food most associated with hermit crab pets, it IS a great snack food to provide!
Change the foods you feed your hermit crab pets with each meal, every day. They WILL get bored and possibly eat less (or stop eating in extreme circumstances) if you feed them the same things every day!
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What is MILLET?
Millet is a type of grass that grows seed in sprays (tall stalks). There are different varieties of millet including pearl, white, elk and more.
Millet is a general term for multiple varieties of this particular type of plant including white millet, pearl millet, elk millet and more. Millet seed grows on a tall stalk so this type of plant is easily recognizable.
Millet has been around for thousands of years, and it’s widely known for being mostly pest and drought resistant.
If you have ever had birds as pets, you fed them “spray millet” or “millet spray” for sure! This is the most popular snack food for all types of pet birds, and one of the most nutritious. Most often millet is sold as full stalks (sprays), and hung inside a bird cage.
Where to find Millet Spray Seed
Millet sprays are found in the bird section of your local pet store. And millet is JUST AS NUTRITIOUS for hermit crabs, as birds! And they love it just as much!
But where does millet come really come from?
Generally millet is grown in many parts of the world. Most of our commercial spray millet for birds comes from Asia.
Pearl millet grows in Florida and parts of Georgia as does a few other varieties of millet.
Millet is also found in lots of human foods, mostly in the “healthy foods” section of your local grocery store.
Nutritional value of Millet Seed
Many farmers feed millet to their cows, chickens and other livestock because it’s so nutritious.
Millet is a whole grain in the Poaceae (grass) family. Each seed (kernel) consists of three parts: bran, endosperm and germ. Each of these three parts has high nutritional value:
- bran (antioxidants, fiber, Vitamin B)
- endosperm (proteins, carbohydrates, proteins and minerals)
- germ (Vitamin B, healthy fats, proteins and minerals)
The bran is the multi-layered outer skin of the kernel (seed). The largest part is the endosperm, and the germ is the small “embryo” which is what can produce a new millet plant in the right conditions.
Millet seed is used in a variety of human foods as well as for birds… including in cereals, flours, rice and bread.
Just remember as scavengers, they like (and need) a wide variety of foods so never feed just one type of food every day and every week.
Why provide Millet Spray to your Hermit Crab Pets?
Hermit crabs eat millet spray seed and love it! Because they love to forage (search) for food in the wild, use millet spray to satisfy this part of their natural instinct! Hang a millet spray in a space where you don’t normally provide food, maybe on an upper level of their habitat. Let them climb for it, search for it, discover it on their own.
Chances are, they’ll spend all day snacking on this seed. They will pick at it for a while, take a break and come back to it later. Then again. And again until it’s completely gone.
And the best part? It’s VERY nutritious for them!!
IF you’re a gardener, or have an empty sunny spot in your backyard… try growing some millet seed! It’d SO easy to grow and grows fast!
Take a little bit of the millet spray you buy for your hermit crabs, and stick it in some soil.
It needs lots of sun, but doesn’t really need great soil or lots of water.
Even if you tend to abuse your plants, you may be successful growing millet! Try it, it can’t hurt.
And if you end up with some millet grass that grows… you’ve got some organic, free and super healthy snack food for your hermit crab pets!
Here’s a link to more specific information on the different types of millet and their uses, and great info on trying to grow some yourself: Growing Millets for Grain, Forage or Cover Crop Use | MU Extension (missouri.edu)
Tip: growing millet seed from packaged seed sprays will most likely grow, but not into full size spray seed plants (which are large). Instead, it will produce little mini seed sprays, each from .5″ to 1″, each filled with plenty of seeds.
Keep any weed killer or pesticide or synthetic fertilizer away from it, and you’ll have a super healthy ORGANIC snack food ready for your hermit crabs… that they’ll love to eat AND pick at!
Last update on 2024-05-08 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API