JesusFreeman
New Member
After a lot of research and conversations I've had with my vet who also expressed concerns about store bot rat food I decided just to make my own mixtures for them.
My vet said that often the food for rats is improperly stored and can be even bad for them because of this and after looking at the ingredients I have a pretty good idea of what the base is.
I buy various seed/nut mixtures, some dried fruit mixtures and a breakfast mixture of various grains, wheat, oats, barley and spelt, everything obviously unsweetened/unsalted, with no additives and mostly unprocessed(aside from the breakfast mix which is precooked and crushed into flakes). These are products actually intended for humans and apparently they're maintained at a higher standard. The seeds and grains are the main source of dry food and occasionally I'll throw in some of the dried fruits if I haven't bought them any fresh for some reason or am going away for a couple days or something. They seem to like the seeds and nuts which have higher fat content, like cashews and sunflower seeds but they also really like pumpkin seeds. They like fresh grapes but not raisins not that I give them too many since they're just sugar basically.
I also basically give them a bit of whatever I've made for myself, I always add salt later to my portions and I usually don't cook with harmful ingredients aside from maybe spinach which I've read conflicting things about, from what I've been able to tell small amounts of cooked spinach should be alright.
I've never had any dietary problems with my rats and, they're not fat or lethargic, my current ones tend to take all the food and stash it in their preferred house and then will spend the whole time running back and forth stealing each others stash at the same time, squeaking at each other every time. They're still friends though, they will cuddle together in their tunnel and stuff, it's just about the food they argue sometimes, it's funny how they can't seem to resist hoarding, it's not like they don't have enough to eat.
My vet said that often the food for rats is improperly stored and can be even bad for them because of this and after looking at the ingredients I have a pretty good idea of what the base is.
I buy various seed/nut mixtures, some dried fruit mixtures and a breakfast mixture of various grains, wheat, oats, barley and spelt, everything obviously unsweetened/unsalted, with no additives and mostly unprocessed(aside from the breakfast mix which is precooked and crushed into flakes). These are products actually intended for humans and apparently they're maintained at a higher standard. The seeds and grains are the main source of dry food and occasionally I'll throw in some of the dried fruits if I haven't bought them any fresh for some reason or am going away for a couple days or something. They seem to like the seeds and nuts which have higher fat content, like cashews and sunflower seeds but they also really like pumpkin seeds. They like fresh grapes but not raisins not that I give them too many since they're just sugar basically.
I also basically give them a bit of whatever I've made for myself, I always add salt later to my portions and I usually don't cook with harmful ingredients aside from maybe spinach which I've read conflicting things about, from what I've been able to tell small amounts of cooked spinach should be alright.
I've never had any dietary problems with my rats and, they're not fat or lethargic, my current ones tend to take all the food and stash it in their preferred house and then will spend the whole time running back and forth stealing each others stash at the same time, squeaking at each other every time. They're still friends though, they will cuddle together in their tunnel and stuff, it's just about the food they argue sometimes, it's funny how they can't seem to resist hoarding, it's not like they don't have enough to eat.