# Christmas Cookies!, but can they have a little bite?



## Phantom (Apr 4, 2012)

Before I begin, let me start out by saying that I never feed my rats or any pet that I have junk food. 

So I'm making Christmas cookies (it's a German recipe), and I thought to myself if I should make a few rat sized cookies for my rats to enjoy over the holidays. Of course they would only get them or special occasions, like Christmas or Saint Nick Day which is today. I was wondering if this recipe is okay for me to use. 

250g Flour
125g Butter
60g Sugar for Vanilla (80g for Chocolate)
(20g cocoa powder for chocolate)
1 packet of vanilla sugar
1 packet of Backtin (kind of like baking powder)
1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice

Why I came across this idea of rat sized Christmas cookies out of this recipe is this, the cookies that I make don't contain a lot of sugar, and they're meant to be hard crunchy cookies, not soft. Like I mentioned before I just wanted to make sure the ingredients were okay to use. This recipe makes a lot of human sized cookies, but I was planning on making just a few rat sized cookies with the human sized ones. I would just give it to them on special occasions as mentioned before. I never try to spoil my pets or feed them anything that shouldn't be fed to them, but I just thought this might be a cute idea. =P


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## fluffy470 (Feb 24, 2012)

I think this should definitely be okay, the only thing in there I would be mildly hesitant about is the chocolate but I have given my boys even chocolatier things  (is chocolatier a word?) Jus keep it in moderation which you are obviously doing and that sound great! I think your gonna have some happy ratlets! 


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

A cookie sized down for rats would be way too much. The amount that would be okay to feed them would be the size of a pea. You would essentially need to get a piping bag and put the smallest dot on a cookie sheet to make rat-sized portions. It would be much easier to simply break a tiny piece off of your cookie.


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## IndyYawns! (Oct 30, 2012)

Just give them some crumbs, or pea-sized tiny rat cookies if you're up to it, lol.
Sounds like fun, I love making rat treats. Also, you could just find a recipe for rat treats that you can make yourself.


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## LightningWolf (Jun 8, 2012)

What you could do, cause i've had this idea before but have never been able to actually do it yet, is use a similar recipe (maybe not as much sugar and that stuff, and make sure the Chocolate is dark chocolate, and if you have males probably no lemon juice) and use cookie cutters to make shapes, make sure that the cookies are really hard, and hang up them up as Chew toys. Maybe 1 or 2 per cage depending on how many rats are in there. Should take them a few days to chew it up unless they really like them (and in which case you have a good cookie recipe). Might help keep them from eating your other stuff (Like the walls, which my rat Soda insist need remodeling in my room).

And if they don't like it, more cookies for you 

just an idea. Some other ideas are basically just flour, something like oats (or flax seed) and mix it with berries (or a berry smoothie) or peanut butter and such and use that for cookies.


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

Over the course of a rat's lifetime a diet including lots of sugar, meat and salt is for sure going to produce a pretty obese rat. It will also likely contribute to other health issues. I suppose it started out with giving our rats treats when they were good, but they were always very good. And now, one is also very fat.

Like certain humans, certain rats also have genetic propensities for tumors and other health issues. These genetic propensities can be exasperated by a poor diet.

That said, having raised a junk food junkie girl rat, I can confirm that at least some rats have an incredible tolerance for junk food, way beyond what you might imagine. 

Back around 1982 I worked in a commercial bakery and in fact they baked millions of cookies every week. I was in college and I was working third shift security and there was each huge wild rat living in the factory. He would only come out if the factory was 100% vacated. For some reason, he wasn't afraid of the security guards. So when I got to work, I'd walk out onto the production floor, I would proceed to the unsalted cracker line and if I found him chomping on unsalted crackers that had fallen on the floor I knew I was perfectly alone in the building. If he wasn't there, I wasn't alone. With the shabby state of the alarm system in the building, and the fact that many employees had passcodes and keys to get in my ratty friend was a real lifesaver. Did I mention he was huge? I suppose that would be expected because he lived on cookies. Also, I might add that they were rat traps along every wall spaced about 15 feet apart, but with tons of cookies to eat they didn't seem to have much appeal to him. So if it matters, I can confirm that you can actually raise a rat from birth to death on a diet consisting principally of cookies. For the more nutritionally minded, it might make certain people feel better that I never actually saw him eat a chocolate chip cookie or cream filled cookie, I always found him under the unsalted soup cracker packaging machines.

So all in all, I'm pretty sure your rats will enjoy your pastry skills with no ill effects as long as you don't overfeed them.

I do want to add one footnote. Certain rats will not eat new foods the first time you introduce them. Rather, they will nibble and walk away. However, the following day they are likely to enjoy their treats with reckless abandon. My six-year-old daughter liked to throw parties for her ratties and she would always convince her mom to buy them a cake. And yes, we are talking humn size cake from the bakery. One of our rats would always refuse to eat the cake until the second time it was introduced, usually on the following day. This would always disappoint my daughter. If you have children, and you intend for them to treat your rats with the cookies, make sure to introduce your cookies to the rats at least the day before the festivities. As much as I realize that it's pretty ridiculous to buy a chocolate cake for a rat, or to set candles and silverware for a ratty party, it was very disappointing for my little girl when her rat wouldn't share her cake after all the effort she invested. As I brought up the subject, the rat that wouldn't eat the cake turned out to be a part wild rat. She never got much over 10 ounces and regardless of what we fed her she remained slim and agile. When set on a table with varieties of food she would choose small portions from various food groups and if you observed her closely she would choose a remarkably healthy diet. On the other hand, our big fat shoulder rat went right for the goodies and would eat until she could eat no more. I suppose rats are a lot like humans, some people just seem to eat healthy and stay thin whereas others just can't help themselves.

I don't know if that helps, but if you don't way your rat to look like the attached photographs, don't get carried away with treats.

Happy holidays to you and your ratties.


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## cccgina1 (Nov 11, 2012)

I share everything with my rats. Little pieces, of course. Really bad stuff, just a bit. They love it. I stay away from dairy and a couple other things I read about here. They also have a regular well blanced diet. I gave mine some cookie pieces the other day. Oatmean raisin. Yum yum! In fact I'm at the point where I buy stuff thinking, oooh, the rats will love this. Lol


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

I was raised way back in the 1960s. Back then TV dinners, fast foods and everything fatty and sweet was considered good for you. Oh yes, doctors actually recommended what we would consider junk food today as the perfect diet. And most of us that were raised on junk food have somehow managed to survive. On the other hand, lots of us are diabetic or overweight.

There were a few people we considered health-food nuts back then and their kids pretty much survived too.

In all reality, there's a pretty wide range of diets that will work okay. For the most part the debate on this forum has been which diet is best rather than which diet can you get away with. I'm pretty sure the debate about which diet being best is never going to be resolved, but as long as you meet all of your rats nutritional needs and don't overfeed them a few treats are going to hurt your rats in any noticeable way.

All in all, rats have a pretty short lifespan no matter what you feed them, knowing that it's hard for me to deny them the finer things in life.


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## HeatherElle (Aug 16, 2012)

We avoid chocolate but we've given them cookies. You said in your post that you "never try to spoil my pets or feed them anything that shouldn't be fed to them" and if you want to stick to that, then I think no, they probably should not eat cookies. Personally though, I'm with Rat Daddy- their lifespan is short no matter their diet... My babies get treats.


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## RuffianZenyatta15 (Sep 4, 2012)

Russell loves gingerbread cookies, but he doesnt get much, just a small piece when we make them.


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## Three B's Mom (Apr 18, 2012)

I give my girls some small pieces of peanut butter or oatmeal raisin cookies occasionally. I think a lot of it has to do with genetics as well. I have three girls, two are a perfect weight and one is a bit overweight. Blossom and Brisby are playing and running around a lot, Blue is just less active than her sisters and they all came from different parents. Just like with humans a little bit of a treat once in a while isn't horrible. I don't eat McDonald's all the time but I do indulge once in a while. So do my ratties.


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## Phantom (Apr 4, 2012)

I've been pretty busy so I aven't had any tiem to look at this thread. Lol. My ratties have no problem with weight. They are both pretty normal. I would never give them too much junk food. As for the cookies, they are hard cookies to begin with. The cocoa powder I use for the chocolate ones is the Hershey's Cocoa powder.


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## Mousey (Oct 23, 2012)

I share everything with my ratties as well  My boy's FN cage is always open in my room and after dinner I go set my plate down on my floor and let them all gather


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