I'm thinking about switching to a home made diet. Hear me out!

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Your best bet would be to find the right choices in food and blend it into a mush, cook it and cut it into pieces like blocks. Or feed it to them mushy. That way, they can't pick out some foods. If you are making up a mix, there is no way to guaranty each rats gets what they need and no dry mix can ever have everything they need.
Some foods I would consider putting in as part of their mushy staple: sweet potato, kale, bok choy, carrots, peas, beans and or lentils, blueberries, just to name a few. But even with that, you would need to calculate their daily required nutrient amounts, all the while, keeping it low fat and low protein most importantly. Oh and oats.
 
That Henry's rat and mouse block..with whey protein isolate and wheat protein isolate as the main ingredients. Yikes! That is so harsh on the kidneys. Way too much protein.
 
I have a co worker who just got her first three little girls. She did a ton of research and got from a breeder (Im texting her now to remind me of what breeder so I can link the site) that has an organic mix recipe on her website. My co worker is following that recipe AND offering lab blocks 50/50. It's been very successful so far from what I've heard, but I'm not sure if she just tosses everything in a bowl or feeds meals. She's a health nut and researches this stuff like crazy. I'd be curious to know what you guys think of it.

Edit: *Deadpan* hahaha. It's Atlantis. If only I had bothered to research on the forum for her before she got rats from there, I would have directed her to Rattuity. http://www.atlantisrattery.com/food.html in case anyone's still interested. My friend is adamant about organics so looking at that mix, I can't recall now if she said she was following Atlantis' mix or sourcing her own organic mix. Either way I don't believe anyone with enough knowledge would feed their rats dog food... pretty sure that's what Oxbow and lab blocks are for. But I digress...

Carry on.
 
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Oof, dog food is a definite no-no. I've adopted boys before who were fed dog food as a staple and they smelled AWFUL, they were over weight, and their fur and skin looked terrible. Way too much protein for those poor little guys.. honestly, I think that's part of the reason Igor passed so young, I adopted him at a year old from someone feeding him dog food. I think he went into kidney failure.

And I know this is going to be costly, especially at first, but I'm willing to do this for my babies. Their needs come before mine, honestly, and a big cost of mine is going to be a food dehydrator, that way I can make batches of fresh foods for them easily, and make sure the dried foods I use aren't loaded with preservatives, salt, and sugar. Uck.
 
Keep in mind that any fresh food you make, without preservatives don't last that long so don't make your batches too big, unless you plan to freeze it.
 
http://nom-ology.blogspot.ca This is a great site to start your research. You need to be aware of your signs of toxicity with too much nutrients and also signs of deficiency with too little nutrients. You'll need to know if adding more of one vitamin could decrease the absorption of another.
There is a diet out there called the Shunamite diet. Everyone in the UK swears by it...but when I check the breeder's rats lifespan, they barely make it to two years old and yet, they still claim that diet as being the best.
When I first started out in rats in 2002, everyone was doing the Suebee's diet. It was all the rage. So naturally I did that...all my rats were dying young barely 18 months so I went to my vet. She asked me what I was giving them and she was shocked that the rat community was pushing this very lacking diet. She put me in touch with an animal nutritionist and conferred with her international colleagues. At that same time, I started to do research on the rat diet and that's when I found out how bad protein was.
In the end... whatever you do, you have to remember, no salt, no sugar, low fat, low protein.
Make sure you have all their proper nutrients and don't allow them to pick and choose their pieces. In 2002, I had a rat who would only eat sunflower seeds and nothing else. He would pick it out of the mix and then starve himself until the next day's batch of mixes.
Your food main food should be made either into a block or a mush. Don't assume all rats love kale, broccoli or what have you. If you give kale for a week and someone doesn't like kale, then that rat is missing out on calcium, vitamin k, vitamin A, magnesium, b6... so if those nutrients are not found anywhere else in their food, you will have rats deficient in nutrients. That's a why a block or mush is essential.
 
We are looking into this as well. As we are trying to live off our own food, growing what we can and buying local organic 85% of the time.
We have a dehydrator and we were thinking of making homemade blocks. Idea is they get a more flavourful variety with a base of the essentials but we can add different "extras" to each batch of blocks to create variety. As well with it in block form the rats cannot just pick and choose what they like and only eat the sweet or salty bits.
This comes from a few situations in our home.
1) We were feeding a mix food for a while when I could not find Oxbow within a 100km radius and we noticed the boys who were a bit chunky were more active and looked a healthier weight
2) the rats feed the dogs their blocks and the one dog is overweight and a senior with joint problems. She did fine while she lived at my mom's away from the rats and lost 3lbs on just dog food. She has since gained 2.5lbs back (imagine 10 human pounds for every 1 she gained or lost) since living with the rats again for only a month. And I see them throw food to her.
If we make our own we can control what the dog ingests as she is on a raw homemade diet and the rat food is very fattening for her.
3) I never have to rely on a pet store for my purchase again. Its all human grade food and I can control exactly what they ingest.
We have researched the vegetables/legumes and vitamin sources that are necessary for the rats. Whats in rat food that they don't really need, what we can use to substitute the GMOs and the fatty/salty ingredients.

I will let you know what steps we take and what we use and the reception from the ratties.
 
Sterling, I'm a bit confused, what are you planning on feeding the rats if you are making it suitable for dogs? Meat, dairy and egg contain far too much protein, cholesterol, saturated and trans fat for rats. That should not be included as part of their diet.

Can you please share your research results here on the vegetables and legumes and vitamin calculations?
Rats lives are far too short to be waiting for a hit or miss on the diet. It's got to be a hit right off the bat.
 
I think the point was that the dog is getting her dog food PLUS all the rat blocks the rats chuck out the cage for the dog to eat, making the dog fat. :giggle:
 
Joanne said it. Its not for the dogs as a staple just want it free of all the over processed stuff and of preservatives. I've got my dogs to the healthy age of nearly 15, when their breed range is 10-12 years. And I'd like to keep them on that road of being healthy old girls. And eating processed lab blocks is not part of a well balanced raw diet. I don't intend on adding any meat protien to the block. Chicken and eggs will still only be a sometimes treat for the rats.

We are still in the research phase doing calculations on lentils, beans, chickpeas for protien content and spinach, apples and bananas once they're juiced, how much fibre, sugar and nutrient they will get from them. I'm not just jumping in and doing trial runs. I meant reception more so for taste and acceptance from the rats, not whether its nutritious enough we won't be giving it to them until we know its nutritionally sound.
 
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Oh good! I would love all your data. I've been wanting to do this for a while but I've never been confident enough to sit down and do the calculations myself.
 
This is the recipe our local rat breeder uses. I have a friend who rescues rats and swears by this mix (along with blocks to fill in any missing nutrients.)

1) 2 parts Organic Regular Rolled Oats. (not oatmeal or quick oats, it's cheap processed and has no food value)

2) 2 parts Organic Millet (Protein and some fat)

3) 3/4 part Organic Brown Rice (Carbs)

4) 3/4 part Wheat Berries (Montana Bronze Chief or any other that looks good to the eye)

5) 3/4 part Organic Quinoa White (Protein)

6) 3/4 part Organic Refined Couscous

7) 3/4 part Organic Raw Sunflower Seeds (Fat)

8) 3/4 part Organic Pearled Barley

9) 1/2 part Organic Yellow Split Peas (not green it makes it look like snot) (Protein)

10) 1/2 part Organic Raisins (Iron) add a 1/2 part of dried cranberries if you want to!

11) Cinnamon Powder, Nutmeg, All Spice

Mix it all together in a bowl

Cooking Directions:

Stove top: In medium saucepan, bring 2-1/4 cups (530ml) of water and 1 cup (235ml) Cook Mix to a boil. Cover with tight fitting lid, reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit, covered, for 5 minutes. Cool completely before serving.

After Cooking:

1) Add Dried fruits IE, cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, apple slices, cherries. (switch these around to keep it fun)

2) Add your favorite veggies, fresh or thawed frozen mixtures.

3) Mix it in with the already cooked mix.

4) Cool and serve!
 
Where do you get your dried fruit? The ones I find are all loaded with sugar.
Also, might want to consider adding turmeric too.
Do you know what's your fat % and protein %? As well as your vitamins A, K, calcium, magnesium, B's. Too little is harmful and too much can be too.
That's my lazy issue...all that calculating, making sure it's right.
 
Try a vegan grocer or organic market.
Otherwise like us we invested in a dehydrator. Then we can make all the no-sugar added fruits we want. We just made raspberry apple fruit leather
 
^That is exactly why I wanted to buy one, to make the sweet potato jerkies for my dogs. LOL it was costing me so much buying from the store.
I got one today. I can't wait to put it to good use.
 
We're doing raspberries tonight to make homemade granola for my bf. He works nights and never has much of an appetite for sandwiches and things like that. So easy finger foods ensure he'll eat. So we have raspberries instead of raisins and then we'll do almond granola bites with honey and voila! Easy healthy snacks!
I like apple slices and banana chips so I make those. We also don't much care for raisins so instead we made apple pieces and did apple cinnamon bread which was delish! The rats enjoyed that too (crust ends toasted)
 

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