# Raw Diet For Rats?



## shaelikestaquitos (Oct 24, 2010)

Hi everyone, so most of you probably don't remember me, but I have... literally... been lurking for several years here (was very close to adopting rats maybe a year or two ago before I started university).

Well, I'm still here, but still ratless *sigh* I've decided to wait until my hedgehog passes the rainbow bridge before I decide to get another small animal.

Aaaanyway, my research is still ongoing, and I remember asking about the diet, and most people here recommended Suebee's mix here on the forum. Well, in the past year, I have switched both my cats as well as my dog onto the raw diet (prey model raw), which got me thinking... can rats thrive on a raw diet as well?

I do realize, of course, that my cats and dogs are not rats (for one thing, rats are omnivores, not carnivores so they definitely would not be doing prey model raw, but a more veggie/grain based diet). I was just wondering if anyone did a raw diet for them  I've done some research on the internet, and there seems to be a couple of people who do it, but I haven't seen anything conclusive.


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## Rumy91989 (Dec 31, 2012)

Just like for dogs and cats, if you can do the raw diet safely and well it obviously makes sense as a good diet for rats since it's their natural diet. You are correct that for rats it would be mostly rat and unprocessed grains, though raw meats would be included since rats do need the occasional supplement of animal protein in their diet. For more information on this I'd send a PM to FamousAmos, as I know he feeds his rats the raw diet and has done a lot of research on it.


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## poodlecrazy1 (Apr 14, 2013)

I am in the process of switching my dogs to prey model raw diet also. It's day number two and its not going great.  they just don't know what to do with it. But I was thinking the same thing your are, can rats do it too? Well I was think and when I was doing my research for the dogs diet the number one key that makes it so dogs can do raw is that their gastrointestinal tract is a lot shorter and food get processed faster hence it is in the system for a shorter time making it so that the bad bacteria in raw food doesn't get a chance to do damage. Well rats digestive system is a lot more similar to humans (this is why they are used as lab animals) so I would think they could get sick from the bacteria in raw food like humans do where as dogs do not. So ya, I hoped this made sense. 


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## shaelikestaquitos (Oct 24, 2010)

Rumy91989, thanks for the tip! I will PM FamousAmos.

poodlecrazy1, poodles tend to be picky eaters from my experience working at a pet boutique lol, but if your dogs are hungry enough, they will eat it, trust me! Sometimes tough love is best  My dog didn't really know how to eat PMR at first either (he's a pom mix ). I had to cut up the meat into smaller pieces at first (I started off with quail and chopped it up into smaller pieces), and then I gradually moved onto larger pieces. He now gets chunks of beef necks, chicken heads, whole quail... you name it, and he'll eat it! Some dogs just need a little more coaxing, but it's definitely worth it!
I understand your concern for bacteria and whatnot... but don't wild rats eat small prey sometimes? I'd of course want to be careful, but I am just a little leery of commercial foods like lab blocks, etc. since I am so against feeding processed foods to my other pets.


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

Yes, raw diets are the most natural and healthy feeding plans for rats.

A good "raw" diet for rats starts and mainly revolves around raw produce of varying kinds with a few select proteins. Then, a grain mix is added to scavenge for extra carbohydrates, vitamins, and trace minerals.


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## shaelikestaquitos (Oct 24, 2010)

cagedbirdsinging said:


> Yes, raw diets are the most natural and healthy feeding plans for rats.
> 
> A good "raw" diet for rats starts and mainly revolves around raw produce of varying kinds with a few select proteins. Then, a grain mix is added to scavenge for extra carbohydrates, vitamins, and trace minerals.


What would you say the appropriate ratio of fresh veggies/fruits - grain - protein would be? I know with dogs and cats it's approximately 80-10-10 for muscle meat, organs, bones. It would give me a good idea as to how much of each I should be providing in their diet


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

Unfortunately, it isn't that simple. Rat nutrition is quite similar to human nutrition as our bodies and DNA are so alike. There is a reason that rats are used as "testers" in place of humans!

It is very difficult to provide balanced nutrition and takes a lot of research to ensure that your rats are getting 100% of everything they need.


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## poodlecrazy1 (Apr 14, 2013)

shaelikestaquitos said:


> Rumy91989, thanks for the tip! I will PM FamousAmos.
> 
> poodlecrazy1, poodles tend to be picky eaters from my experience working at a pet boutique lol, but if your dogs are hungry enough, they will eat it, trust me! Sometimes tough love is best  My dog didn't really know how to eat PMR at first either (he's a pom mix ). I had to cut up the meat into smaller pieces at first (I started off with quail and chopped it up into smaller pieces), and then I gradually moved onto larger pieces. He now gets chunks of beef necks, chicken heads, whole quail... you name it, and he'll eat it! Some dogs just need a little more coaxing, but it's definitely worth it!
> I understand your concern for bacteria and whatnot... but don't wild rats eat small prey sometimes? I'd of course want to be careful, but I am just a little leery of commercial foods like lab blocks, etc. since I am so against feeding processed foods to my other pets.


Lol yes my Tpoos are very picky eaters. Thanks for the tips I figured if they got hungry enough they would eat sooner or later. It's just hard leaving raw meat out, I will only give then 15 mins to eat it them put it up. I fasted them since about 2-3 pm yesterday till about 5 pm today and sure enough they ate it all up! Quail! That is a great idea for smaller dogs! Trying to get chicken with bone into 1-2 oz pieces is super difficult! Now where do you find quail? 
Good point on wild rats eating small prey I never thought of that. I wonder what prey they catch? I think it would mostly be insects and stuff. Maybe small baby animals? Eggs? Idk. I raise mealworms for my rats and they love them! They also love crickets but since I don't raise those I am very cautious where I buy them and when I feed them. Just incase if parasites and diseases. I guess that would be considered a raw part if their diet. As for the other part of their diet they get just plain old Oxbow  I would love to know anything else you find out on a raw diet for rats! 


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## Isamurat (Jul 27, 2012)

I’ve been there and done this and it is hard work, but if you get it right very rewarding. I’ve been feeding a straights based diet since around 2004, straight based being a term we use in the Uk to describe a diet that is mainly made up of minimally processed grains and seeds (so as close to natural as we can get it). Suebee’s diet isn’t great, there’s a lot of junk food in there. I would recommend reading up on the Shunamite diet, it’s a UK adaption that’s gone through a lot of improvement over the past few years and it’s perfectly possible to feed a ‘raw’ style diet and follow its guidelines. As long as you do this and learn to read your rats condition then it’s fairly straightforward and a lot easier than going at it from scratch (which is what I did). When I was working on one of the early “straights based diets” that were a prequel to the current Shunamite diet (make sure you find the latest, the old ones don’t use straight grains) I learnt quite a few lessons, here’s a little bit about my journey and how its moulded into the diet I feed today, hopefully this will help you on your own and help you avoid the potentially pitfalls out there.

When I first started I was feeding a rabbit food based Shunamite (old style), the rabbit food I was using changed, became dusty and I just didn’t like it and at the time I couldn’t find an alternative I liked. My lads were also getting chubby despite my attempts to keep them slim (in hindsight I was simply feeding too much lol). I decided to try and create a diet as close to what rats naturally ate as possible. To me these were made up of several food groups (which linked to my understanding of rat nutrition) and I would use a spreadsheet I made up to work out the nutritional balance of the mix;

Grains – in the wild unprocessed grains make up the largest part of a rats diet. They originally come from Asia so I knew rice had to be a decent part. My research up to that point also made clear that using a wide variety of grains was the best way to make sure that you got a balanced mix, and also some grains (like oats, rye and wheat) were harsh on the kidneys, so needed to be in smaller amounts. I also wanted to try and get grains as close to there natural state as possible, so looked into animal feeds as human grains have the husk and often most of the bran taken off. I ended up finding some decent quality animal feeds such as rolled oats (oats that have been cracked slightly so the husk is easier to get off, sold for horses), micronized mixed flakes (barley, peas and maize squashed and slightly heated still in there husks – note you need to be careful with maize/corn as some forms can get toxic mould) and paddy rice (brown rice still in its husks sold for birds and parrots). I also used millet a bit too, the ones on sprigs sold for birds were good as they are easier for a rat to find when you scatter feed, now my lads can find even a tiny linseed in there substrate but at the start they weren’t as capable. I made a mix which focused on rice and barley with a good mix of other grains in it. One of the most useful places I found was a parrot food shop that had lots of unprocessed grains to make up your own parrot food. This place now has its own rat food business here in the UK and in Europe, I still think the owner blames me lol. 

Seeds – at first I tried to keep this area low, around 3% or so, to try and keep the fat levels of the overall mix low (at the time I wrongly linked fat content with my lads being chubby). I aimed for seeds still in there shells where I could and tried to get some of the seeds with better fats in them. Particularly linseed, pumpkin seeds and hemp, with the odd small nut in its shell. I didn’t want to rely on Niger/sunflower seeds which is what some other people were doing as there can be issues with the proteins in them, plus the fats are not as high in Omega 3. The key thing here was to keep the seeds/nuts small enough that it would divide when I fed it, so in each serving of mix you got some, rather than say putting a few walnuts in the overall mix, which would only pop up every few days and one rat could get all of it. With bigger items I would chop them up smaller (like brazil nuts, as here in the UK we have a selenium deficiency in our crops).

Veg and Herbs – I always planned to feed fresh veg alongside my mix but it became apparent that a mix without some dried veg/herbs in would potentially be down a bit on vitamins and minerals. I also reasoned that some of the herbs out there can be very useful for health, and their nutritional profile is fairly neutral (as in they aren’t massively higher or lower in your big 2 nutrients – protein and fat, than a rat needs). I also was building my mix to be something that would stimulate a rats mind as well as meet its nutritional needs so having an area where I could regularly vary the flavours and textures. This section also reflects a rats natural diet which would contain a fair amount of both herbs and vegetables. At first I mainly used dried herb mixes I found sold for rabbits as treats, occasionally drying my own. This was especially true of mushrooms which helped my up the amount of copper in the mix, something which was clearly low in many of the ingredients. Seaweed was also a key addition, to help mop up some of the trace minerals as it is crammed full of useful things.

Protein source – this was probably the hardest to try and sort out at first, I really wanted to replicate a rats natural protein sources which would predominantly be insects they catch and maybe some fish etc. However finding dried insects was hard, the easiest was mealworms sold for birds but they are quite high in fat so there was some balancing to be done. The other obvious source of protein a rat could naturally have is pulses such as peas and beans, however some beans and peas are actually toxic when dried as they contain a lot of antinutrients. I temporarily used some processed soya protein but was never massively happy with it and then found that you could soak and roast some beans/peas, giving you a product that would last in a dry mix and not contain antinutrients. I ended up adding both soya beans and chickpeas, first soaking them for 12 hours, then roasting them for about 20 mins, these also ended up making a nice human and rat snack. He chickpeas had the bonus of having a decent calcium content in them which was a worry of mine. I then had another think and realised that egg was also a good protein source that was naturally occurring, but how on earth do you get that in a mix. The best I could find was bird egg food, this is an egg soaked biscuit crumb which bird fanciers use to help young birds grow and is also something commonly used by rat fanciers over here to give to rat kittens as a nice nutrient filled porridge. It was a bit processed for my taste but helped me hit the wide range of protein sources our rats naturally have. Later I discovered an amphibian/reptile feed place which did a wide range of dried bugs/sea creatures. This really helped balance the mix as I added shrimps, dried tiny fish and some other insects to the mix rather than just mealworms.


I ran with this mix for a while, and soon there were plenty of other people in the UK wanting to try it. Some people replaced the protein section with feeding fresh, which can work well, but proved more of an art and you really need to know how to ‘read’ your rats to do this. 

At first it went well, the lads were pretty good coat condition, not amazing but as good as I’d got on my previous mix. Then my rats started to age, as a rat ages there body becomes less efficient and getting nutrition out of food. Whilst my lads still loved there diet it became clear that they weren’t doing nearly as well on it. Working this out and talking to a few people I realised that they needed some foods in there that they could more easily get the nutrients out. Whilst I could help this by feeding regular wet food the lads weren’t bad enough to need it daily and had a tendency to get chubby. I decided to add in some more processed grains. Again I used a spreadsheet to calculate the balance (by the way I probably have one knocking around somewhere if you ever want to use it, though honestly it can cause issues as you’ll see) and came up with a mix with a decent percentage of processed grains alongside the minimally processed stuff (say about 10%). This had the added bonus of having some added vitamins and minerals in it, as I used human breakfast cereals (low sugar) which have vitamins sprayed on them. It also helped lower the phosphorous levels overall as grain’s contain a fair amount of it, most being in their husks (oats, wheat and rye are the worst), these are not great for a rat with kidney issues and this is one of the main causes of the gradual decline you see in older rats. They did noticeably improve on this and I was pleased, gradually upping the processed grains as they got older, alongside regular fresh food, probably up to 15%.

Then came my first babies on the mix, they came to me at 7 weeks, however 2 of the 4 babies had been fed on a similar mix from weaning as by then this style of mix was becoming popular. They were doing well, lovely and shiny and appeared to be growing well, however whatever I did I couldn’t get their tails to be round. I don’t know how much you know about reading rats but their tail is a really good indicator of there overall nutritional status, a square tail indicates that there not getting as much of something as there body needs to create or maintain the muscles there (the coat is the other big ‘tell’). I discussed this a lot with a good friend (and rat nutritional guru – Alison Campbell) and we ruled out some things such as protein levels (I fed plenty of fresh protein and monitored them), vitamin K or C deficiency (they got dark green leafy veg,, carrots etc daily) and then looked at fat. I tried adding extra oil to a wet meal twice a week and that helped. That made it clear that whilst my mix was coming out at around 4-5% fat by weight, and this was nutritionally correct for rats, it simply wasn’t enough for them. I upped the amount of seeds in the mix to compensate and they improved but they still weren’t right. 

Then came Yoshi, he was one of the 4 babies and remains to this day the clumsiest rat I’ve owned. Through some fluke he managed to fall from the top of the cage, miss various things designed to catch him and my hands and hit the floor, this was a fall of about 6 ft, a long way for a rat to fall but one that I have had rats fall with no injury. After significant panic he appeared fine (far better than me) yet when he went to lick me to reassure me I saw one of his teeth had snapped off. The next day his other top tooth snapped. I had never had a rat snap there teeth before, nor have since and it immediately sounded warning bells. I went through the mix again and realised it could be a little weak in calcium, but wasn’t bad and I regularly fed bones. Then Alison, me and a few others were discussing some issues other people were having, Yoshi wasn’t the only tooth breaker out there. It became clear that our mixes were all deficient in vitamin D. Something very hard to get into a mix made of dried food, it comes in 2 halves, one half can be found in veg, the other half in meats (generally speaking), it needs both parts to work. It is responsible for allowing calcium to work in the body, and even though my rats were getting enough calcium they weren’t getting the vitamin D they needed to use it. To cut a long story short this made me re-evaluate my mix. It became clear that without using some supplements I was at risk of not giving them the vitamin D I needed, I also then realised that whilst I could spread sheet the major nutrients, finding out the different micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) was very difficult, and reading further into it it became clear that even government standard figures were unreliable. For example wheat grown in the US has plenty of selenium in it, as you’ve got lots in your soil. The same plant grown in the UK hasn’t. That can even have an effect from one field to the next. 

This was an important lesson and it told me that you can research everything under then son, add up everything perfectly and still get it wrong. I began to realise that feeding is not just about the science. Yes its important to understand basic nutrition, but that on its own wont guarantee your rats are getting what they need. Especially given that rats themselves vary so much. For example of my 4 babies, 2 (brothers from one ‘line’) were doing well, had nice round tails etc, the other 2 (brothers from a different line) were showing the symptoms far more and clearly needed more. This led to the understanding that feeding is part Art, part Science. You need to be able to flex any diet you do to fit your rats, if you really want to make them glow with health.

From this I became more relaxed about my mixes detail. I mixed by volume, going for something that was far more in line with the current Shunamite diet (this was written up around a similar time, as me and Alison and a number of others worked out how to make this straights theme work). I also use my rats as a guidebook for how I varied it, so if they were lacking that sparkle to there coat I added a bit more seeds the next mix and so on. I also fed regular supplements covering all the major micronutrients I knew that any mix had the potential to be short in (vit D, calcium and copper) and gave a bit extra. As an extra safety net I upped the amount of processed grains to about 20% and added in a bit of high quality dog kibble as part of my protein section (we’ve got some really nice brands over here, no junk in them) as this had high levels of copper in it. The difference was amazing, with this and there daily veg the lads started to shine and fill out better. They’d gone from fair condition to good condition. Unfortunately (and it is something I will never forget) damage was already done. Vitamin D is a vital nutrient for young animals, and the fact they had missed out had repercussions well into old age. It wasn’t just mine that were affected, a number of rats around the country aged faster than normal and just didn’t live as long as the more normal average age for their family’s. In my lads I saw one lad get HLD far younger than I would have expected (still 17months or so but this was early in our lines) and it seemed to be more neurologically linked (vit d deficiency in infancy is known to cause MS in humans). Its taught me that even if you want to go completely into something (for instance I didn’t really want to use supplements as I felt I should be able to achieve it naturally) then for the rats sake you need to make sure that you are covered and then some.

Now I am pretty comfortable with my mix. There are babies knocking around that have been raised on it, who have had babies in turn and so on. It’s pretty mature and similar mixes are pretty much the norm over here in the UK, at least amongst internet communities. I now add a bit of a nicer rabbit mix to my minimally processed grain section, alongside mixed flaked grains, paddy rice and a wonderfully varied grain pigeon mix. These form my base, the rabbit food adding an extra safety net, though its no longer a fully straights based mix. I still add a bit of dog food in as well as all the other protein sources and have a really varied mix which is a bit different each time. I don’t mix to an exact science, I mix to what my rats need and whilst there are times when there not perfect it’s regularly remarked at how nice condition my rats are, they may be boys but they have shinier coats than some girls I know.

There’s an example of one of my mixes floating around, I think its linked on a sticky, I go through it a step at a time, showing every ingredient I added to that one. Well worth a look. Your mix doesn’t need to be the same but it might point you in the right direction.

I also recommend getting a copy of the ‘Scuttling Gourmet’ (issue 3) to anyone planning on creating their own mix, or diet, from scratch. Whilst the information in it Is out there, this pulls it into one place and makes it a **** of a lot easier. Unfortunately shipment to the US makes it expensive, though I’m not sure how much, I’m lucky enough to be here in the UK, plus have its author a phone call away lol. Failing that the uk based ‘Fancy Rats’ forum has a lot of articles written by alison in it that should point you in the right direction. I’ve also got some waffle on my website, though really need to add more. I can also recommend looking into the website ‘toothbrush rats’ as the lady that wrote it trialled feeding raw meat/bones alongside a grain mix (as the protein element) and got great results.


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## shaelikestaquitos (Oct 24, 2010)

poodlecrazy1 said:


> Lol yes my Tpoos are very picky eaters. Thanks for the tips I figured if they got hungry enough they would eat sooner or later. It's just hard leaving raw meat out, I will only give then 15 mins to eat it them put it up. I fasted them since about 2-3 pm yesterday till about 5 pm today and sure enough they ate it all up! Quail! That is a great idea for smaller dogs! Trying to get chicken with bone into 1-2 oz pieces is super difficult! Now where do you find quail?
> Good point on wild rats eating small prey I never thought of that. I wonder what prey they catch? I think it would mostly be insects and stuff. Maybe small baby animals? Eggs? Idk. I raise mealworms for my rats and they love them! They also love crickets but since I don't raise those I am very cautious where I buy them and when I feed them. Just incase if parasites and diseases. I guess that would be considered a raw part if their diet. As for the other part of their diet they get just plain old Oxbow  I would love to know anything else you find out on a raw diet for rats!
> 
> 
> Sent from Petguide.com Free App


Yeah that's what I do with dogs that haven't been fed raw. Leave it out for 15 mins. If they don't eat it, it goes back in the fridge and I will offer it later on in the day. I buy quail at a local ethnic foods store  I buy most of my meat there since I can get my hands on organ meats, and other exotic meats as well.

Yeah I think they eat mostly insects and sometimes eggs and baby animals.



Isamurat, thanks a lot for the info! I will definitely look into the Shunamite diet


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## LightningWolf (Jun 8, 2012)

My boys are on a raw diet, and have been for a while. I can go more into details, but basically it's higher in nuts and seeds then what most people on here like, and contains a large amount of leafy greens and root vegetables, along with mushrooms. The reason I've stopped going too far into details is that in the pass, just because a diet is different no matter how well the rats on the diet are, fights have also started over how someone's diet is "bad".

I recommend though doing a lot of research. Not just on what rats need, but what sources contain these nutrients. It's not quite as simple as a raw diet since some things have to be balanced out. (example. Zinc to Copper ratio, which I'm sure many starting on a raw diet have messed up many times. At least in this case it's easy to tell if it's wrong since it will cause a rat's fur to start rusting/turn brown if one of them, mainly copper, is low).

These links might help you out a bit

http://nom-ology.blogspot.com/ - it was written by a pass breeder named Black wolf rattery I believe. It's a good read though, but I feel the tone of it tries to push people Away from homemade diets.
http://www.healthaliciousness.com/most-nutritious-foods-lists.php - A website for people. Lists foods by their nutritional value, and show which ones contain a large amount of a certain vitamin. There are other websites for this, but this one is the easiest to read and allows you to compare foods to each other.

Also remember to go light on actual meats, rats lack a gal bladder so meat fats put a strain on their livers. Actual meats should really be as a treat in my opinion, even then stick to stuff like chicken or turkey. Though rats love insects and fish, especially "smellier" fish like sardines. 

Also, congrats on the raw diet for your dog and cat. Our dog pup got switched onto it a few weeks ago for his arthritis. About 2 days in he decided to keep flipping his food bowl (with his dry dog food) and stopped eating dry food. Btw, he's 12 years old so I'm shocked he did so well with the switch. He didn't even have stomach issues. I would love for our cat to get on it, but she's picky. Once we get him onto a good raw diet we're going to focus more on switching her over.

Anyways, good luck with finding a diet for your future rats. One thing to remember is that all rats are different, and some do better on some diets then others. The key is to find what works for You and stick to it.


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## CherryDawn89 (Aug 25, 2012)

I'm going to join in on this discussion with a question of my own. I feed my girls the Kaytee Fiesta Mix and I want to give them an organic feed mix. Could someone let me know what seeds and grains and other good stuff to put in one?


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