FEEDING NUTS

[Little girls mom]

Hi my little girl is 5mths old and i have not given her any nuts yet. She eats HHB"s and veggies along with her fox valley she loves and drinks from a saucer. I don"t give fruit yet so she would eat her healthy foods first. My questions are: What age can i start giving nuts in the shell? I want to start giving her nuts in the shell because she doesn't seem interested here lately with chewing on the oak branches i give her and it worries me because i know she needs to chew. She has a deer antler and seems to have lost interest in it too. Where do you guys buy your nuts and how do you know when they are given a nut with the shell that the nut inside will not be bad?? That scares me. I bought some hazelnuts from the store and was wanting to know what you guys thought about them. 267180 Thanks so much!!:w00t P.S. Where and how do you store your nuts??

[SammysMom]

I think it would be fine to give her a hazelnut! She will have earned eating it when she gets it open, as they are hard as rocks. I just store them in the pantry where it is cool and dry. Mine get a nut per day after all good food is eaten. Almonds and hazelnuts are best for their Ca/phos ratio too.:thumbsup

[Little girls mom]

I think it would be fine to give her a hazelnut! She will have earned eating it when she gets it open, as they are hard as rocks. I just store them in the pantry where it is cool and dry. Mine get a nut per day after all good food is eaten. Almonds and hazelnuts are best for their Ca/phos ratio too.:thumbsup

Thank you SammysMom! I bought some raw almond shelled and some shelled pecans also. Are pecans bad for her? So the hazelnut will help with her teeth? And how do i know if one is bad?? I would hate for her to crack open a nut and eat a bad one!! How do you know?:dono

[SammysMom]

I don't worry about hazelnuts being "bad". It is more softer nuts like chestnuts which I don't usually feed and when I do I cut them in half to see if they are okay. I would give almonds in the shell rather than shelled. I really like to give their teeth the benefit of chewing the nuts open if I am going to give nuts.
She will be so happy to get a taste, but you have been great this far with keeping her away from them, stay strong and go very easy with them. They are like squirrelly crack...:rofl4

[Little girls mom]

I don't worry about hazelnuts being "bad". It is more softer nuts like chestnuts which I don't usually feed and when I do I cut them in half to see if they are okay. I would give almonds in the shell rather than shelled. I really like to give their teeth the benefit of chewing the nuts open if I am going to give nuts.
She will be so happy to get a taste, but you have been great this far with keeping her away from them, stay strong and go very easy with them. They are like squirrelly crack...:rofl4

Thanks again SammysMom! I will give her nuts in the shell then because i feel like she needs to be chewing so she wont get in trouble with her teeth. I will start with the hazelnuts being that is the only one i have in the shell. How long does it take for them to chew open a hazelnut and they dont eat the shell do they? I will let you know how it goes! squirrelly crack!!! Thats funny!!:grin3

[SammysMom]

Some can open them in seconds, but the first one will probably take a while. They wont eat the shells and you dont want to step on them either. I had a piece in my foot for weeks before figurong out what was wrong with it...:shakehead

[island rehabber]

I had a piece in my foot for weeks before figurong out what was wrong with it...:shakehead

And nothing says "slip and fall" like a hard piece of shell on a tile floor. My BF watched in hysterics once as I slipped on a hazelnut shell (I was wearing hard-soled shoes), flew thru the air and almost did a face plant in the cats' dishes :yuck

[Gardentoes11]

I'd been giving my Jasper acorns until I read on here that they can get a deadly mold inside. Looked around online & found hazelnuts in the shell, & they looked almost like acorns, so I got some. Jazzy LOVES them! Doesn't take him long to open them up now--he's become somewhat of an expert. He throws the shells on the floor, where the blend perfectly into my carpet. Nothing like walking along in my socks and having one embed itself in the sole of my foot! Yowee! But his pleasure in eating them is worth the stabbing!

Jazz also loves pecans--they're his very favorite nut, although he'll eat almonds & walnuts, too, & chestnuts that I've cut in half. Right now, a lot of the grocery stores have bulk nuts in the shell that include a mix of walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, almonds, & sometimes brazil nuts. Found them at WalMart for $3.99/lb! Like the others said before, I pitch the brazil nuts--from what I've read, they're not even good for humans due to the selenium content. Then Jasper gets to choose 1 nut per day to eat. He has a hard time controlling himself! Only time he gets nasty is when there's a nut involved!