# Is his herb mix safe for rats?



## allisonj30 (Apr 1, 2015)

I bought some chew toys off of a bird website for my rats and got a free bag of dried herb salad. I'm not sure if rats even like to eat this type of thing, but this is the list of ingredients: red clover blossom, echinacea, chickweed herb, dandelion leaf, plantain leaf, garlic flakes, oat straw, yarrow flower, licorice root, milk thistle seed, kelp granules, elder berry, wheat grass, lavender flower, astragalus root, elder flower, marshmallow root, spirulina, barberry root, olive leaf, pau d'arco bark, wormwood. Does this sound safe to feed to rats?


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## CourteesRatties (Feb 23, 2016)

*Licorice. *This food is suspected to cause neurological poisoning in rats.
So no.....


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## Gribouilli (Dec 25, 2015)

There are a few foods on the "do not feed your rats" list that aren't accurate anymore/or would need gigantic amount to be bad, as we know differently now. Is licorice one of them? Not sure.

I researched it a while back and saw lots of research that explored the benefits of licorice using...well rats. Would they use rats to show the benefits of licorice if at the same time they were poisoning the rats; that would certainly have messed up their results. So I don't have a definite answer. I also have a herb salad with many more herbs in it, and licorice is one of them. I didn't give any to my rats as of yet. I bought it a few months ago.


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## Gribouilli (Dec 25, 2015)

All the other herbs should be fine and a great addition to a rat diet for health benefits but also fun. I'm talking a pinch or two per rat. You could buy some herbs individually. I know some breeders do that. Here is the thread I started on the same topic, and if you go to the reference I cited, it says that licorice being bad has been debunked. I didn't get any answers to my thread though, lol. http://www.ratforum.com/showthread.php?312954-Herbs-Salad-For-Rats


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