# What rat food (mix/pellets) do your little terrors prefer?



## Imaginary Evil (Jul 7, 2012)

I'm having a minor issue at the moment with my boy and girls not really liking their food - they don't mind some of it but pick out the bits they like and leave the rest - it's quite expensive and I'm throwing away at least half of every bag! 

I'm using Beaphar Xtravital.I thought about getting the bags of pellets (the one's that are all the same colour and size) but they look terribly boring and unappealing - would they like these better or hate me for giving it to them?  

I supplement their diet with fresh fruit and vegetables and the odd bit of chicken. 

Any suggestions of what I can feed them that's tasty, crunchy and won't cost me an arm and a leg?


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## elliriyanna (Jul 27, 2011)

I am not in the UK so I don't know what's available but mixes tend to not work well with rats they pick and choose and your supplementing sounds great


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## jadeelizabeth (Jul 26, 2012)

I actually use a rabbit mix, its cheaper and has more nice bits in  I get it from my local pet store and it contiains the normal bits and dried banana which they love! 








They used to be on an expensive rat mix but they didn't like much of it and I had to fill it 3 times a day because they would throw the bits out they hate XD 

They still won't eat these bits though!


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## Isamurat (Jul 27, 2012)

I'm based in the uk, i am also a big fan of mixes, for me rats are too intelligent to eat a diet of all identical bits and bobs (even if there tasty identical things), plus the pelleted food availble here is pretty poor quality overall. In terms of encouraging rats to eat i find that increasing the variety can often help, as long as you don't feed more than they need (which is pretty common and leads to chubby rats). There's a fair few good options out there. 

Mixing 2-3 different shop bought mixes
I don't rate many of the commercially sold mixes out there on their own, most have significant weaknesses, take x-travital, it contains poulty protien (could be linked to increased risk of tumours) and is quite high in wheat based products (not good for old rats) or at least it used to, they've stopped putting the info online now and i haven't used it for ages. However that doesn't mean its a bad food, if you can outweigh that a little, perhaps by mixing it with a rabbit food like alpha herbal delux or harrisons bannana brunch that are nice and low in wheat and actually make very good rat foods. With a bit of thinking you can also adapt this to feed different aged rats (so add more higher protien food for youngsters, drop the protien levels of oldies and watch the wheat levels more).

Making your own mix
This is very common in the uk online rat community, the main guidelines used are the 'Shunamite Diet', its a uk diet that is similar in principle to the american 'Suebees diet' just suited to what you can get hold of here, and now evolved to include a less processed option. The principles of this are as follows;

Base mix (minimally processed grains) - 50-60%
This can either be a good quality rat or rabbit mix or a mixture of at least 3 -4 minimally processed grains like paddy rice, barley, flaked corn, millet, oats (keep low for boys and oldies), wheat (as oats), buckwheat. Ideally still in there husks. I would suggest barley and rice form the major parts as they are nice and low in phospherous (which hurts old rats kidneys). I actually use a mixture of the above, i use harrisons bannana brunch mixed 50:50 with either a rat rations base mix or a mixture of grains i make myself.

Processed Grains (15-20%)
This uses human quality breakfast cereals and more processed grains to add in more easily digestable nutrients as well as those enriched breakfast cereals being full of vitamins and minerals. Aim for low sugar (less than 5g per 100g) and at least 2-3 grains, typically supermarkets value ranges are lowest sugar and cheap too. Some good options are cornflakes, rice puffs, shredded wheat bitesize, wheatabix broken up (avoid for oldies), ryevita, brown rice, mini pasta shapes, broken up egg noodles etc.

Protien (5-10%)
Thi depends on your base mix, if it's a rat food or a higher protien rabbit food (14%+) then you won't need much, also you'll want this higher for youngsters and lower for oldies. Typically good options are senior dog food (i prefer organic/natural fish based as it's less farmed and has less chemicals involved, fish for dogs stuff is great, as is burns, james wellbeloved and wainrights), dried shrimps, fish and bugs (often sold for birds/terrapin foods), soya flakes, and to some extent lentils and peas (these aren't so high in protien so you need to add a bit more for the effect). In reality i have pretty much all those options in my mix jsut in small amounts as i find variety helps cover deficiencys. The other option is to leave this out and feed it as 1-2 x a week fresh protien which can work well

Herbs, veg and seeds (15%, of which 5% should be seeds)
This adds variety, falvour and vitamins and minerals too, the seeds add essential omega oils. It's also probably the most fun section and you can use it to add in some herbal health boosters which can be useful. There's lots of optionsFor this, you can get nice herb and veg mixes from most pet shops (online and chains) sold for rabbits, there’s one I particularly love in the naturals range called herb plus (it’s minty smelling and the rats adore it), you can also get dried veg from supermarkets and dry your own herbs easily enough, dandelion is particularly handy this time of year and full of calcium (a real rat superfood). Seed wise you can get some nice bird seed mixes, but I would avoid any too heavy in sunflower seeds or peanuts. I go for a mix of linseed, hempseed and pumkin seeds as the bulk of my seeds and add in some interesting ones from rat rations like fennel or cumin etc just to change the flavours now and then.

You just mix all this up together (I do about 1-2 months worth at a time) and feed it to the rats. If you don’t use a rabbit food base and dog kibble you will need to supplement vitamin D, Calcium and Copper (as their just isn’t enough naturally in those types of food), but theres more info on how to do that below. If your struggling for any ingredients i can recommend rat rations, they are a uk (actually now europe too) based rat food and stuff shop that stocks pretty much everything you want online. I really rate them and there lovely people too. There website is here

Rat rations complete mixes + suppliments
This is essentially a ready made 'mix your own' mix with a straights base made by rat rations. The main ones on there have been designed by Alison Campbell (who wrote the shunamite diet and the rat nutrition book 'scutteling gormet') and Mary (who used the principles above to create a few alternatives. Both of whome know what there doing when it comes to rat food. The only issue with these is as they don't have vitamins and mienrals sprayed on them in a factory (which is what happens with commercial pet foods) you need to feed additional vitamin D, Calcium and Copper. You could do this by feeding bones/egg weekly and daily dark green leafy veg, or for a simpler option there's a couple of powders and/or water addatives you can get from there, i find calcivet and daily essentials 2-3 times a week (more for babies) works well.

If you get interested in all this i would recommend getting a copy of the scuttling gormet book, it's a real gold mine of rat nutritonal info as well as recipies and such to mess around with. There's also a section on feeding in a way to keep your rats interested and excited which is worthwhile reading.


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## Isamurat (Jul 27, 2012)

jadeelizabeth said:


> I actually use a rabbit mix, its cheaper and has more nice bits in  I get it from my local pet store and it contiains the normal bits and dried banana which they love!
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Those bits are alfalfa pellets, some rats might eat them but they are essential nutritionally pointless of rats as their stomachs are not designed to digest grass like a rabbits is. Annoyingly a lot of rabbit foods use these pellets to hold some of the added vitamins in which can mean that rats fed on mixes high in them don’t get everything they need. Saying that I still feed half rabbit food as the base of my mix, there’s not much at all the lads don’t eat in harrisons banana brunch, and back when I fed alpha herbal as a base (before I got fed up of the wheat disks being such a major ingredient) that used to go down well.

I’ve also heard fo some people using horse mixes such as Dodson and horrels pasture or build up mix as bases and organic pig nuts (useually very high in copper). One of my friends has just started feeding a pigeon mix as part of her base. There really are so many options out there, as long as you follow some nice general guidelines;
1, aim for protein at around 12-14% (higher for youngsters, and you can get away with a bit more in does) and about 4-5% good quality fat. If you get higher or lower than this you can dilute or add in extra to bring it to roughly the right amount
2, have a good range of grains in there and a decent variety of ingredients (variety helps avoid vitamin deficiencies)
3, Aim for nice quality identifiable listed ingredients (so something saying salmon as opposed to fish meal which is all the rubbish that’s left on the bones is better, wheat and oat feed are the bits of chopped up left over straw rather than the grain and so on). You may want to avoid poultry / chicken protiens, some of these are really poor quality and can be full of chemicals to help them grow big fast, which is the last thing rats need when there already prone to tumours.
4, Avoid too many colourings and additives
5, Keep wheat and oat content low where possible, especially if you keep boys or have old rats in the cage (rats are very prone to kidney failure as they age, phosphorous, which is high in wheat and oats, makes this more likely and happen faster).
6, Avoid high sugar and high salt


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## jadeelizabeth (Jul 26, 2012)

Ahh thankyou. I have been wondering what they were and why they weren't interested XD

I am going to try a different pet shop and you what you said, mine don't display the ingredients ect , they are just bagged up in boxes!

Thank You!


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## chippy (Aug 3, 2012)

Glad you asked the question! Lots of great food ideas and I'd been feeling that Salty isn't getting enough variety. 


Sent from my iPhone using PG Free


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

Jade: As mentioned, those are alfalfa pellets which are not easily digested by rats, so they are not eaten. That's also where a lot of the artificial fortifications are in those types of diets. It is really not at all suitable for rats and I highly recommend finding a new diet.

As far as the other questions and ideas brought up... variety really is the key to a healthy rat, both physically and mentally. They are intelligent scavengers that gain a lot of mental health from being able to forage for different food particles.

A lot of commercial mixes are far too full of seeds, nuts, and dried fruits, which of course make the rats pick those bits out and refuse the rest. Homemade mixes also tend to be heavy on the processed cereals, which isn't great either. Good mixes have no less than ten different grains, plus a few different nuts and seeds chosen for trace minerals making the minority of the mix.

And, of course, no homemade dry mix alone is complete diet. I mix specific fresh foods and store most in the freezer with one bag in the fridge to be served once or twice daily. I'm working up the recipe for my "rat salad" to be posted soon.


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## Isamurat (Jul 27, 2012)

Cagebirdsing - one advantage of living in the UK is that getting hold of minimally processed grains (like you'd find in the better mixes) is easy. You can get them cheaply in large amounts from farm and equine shops and you can get them in small amounts from rat rations, though it is more expensive with postage. It makes making your own mix much more rewarding.

I do the frozen rat salad too, I make up lots of mini bags of veg for the lads which they get daily. I make them all slightly different mixes. I use the following principles

50% Dark green leafy veg - typically kale, dandilion, pak choi, spring greens, green cabbage, herbs etc
20% bright veg - typically carrots, peppers, tomatoes, sweetcorn etc
20% other veg - including brocelli, cauliflower, corvette, peas, soya beans, mixed stirfry veg etc
10% fruit and special - generally berries and a bit of coconut (adds nice oil in, my diet is overall low fat), sometimes other fruit, like grapes, apple, banana etc

I get most frozen already and mix up, some I get fresh which needs a bit more prep but I have a rat drawer in the freezer I store it all then just grab a bag a day. Works great.


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## jadeelizabeth (Jul 26, 2012)

Yes, the bag is nearly finished up so I went to the shop at sat there for half a hour examining every bag and found one without it in and with alot more nice things in  I picked up the rat mix and it was utter rubbish! There were a few pellets and the rest was Alfafa and tiny seeds! My boys won't touch any of that! 

I would do my own mix but I don't have the room to store all that extra food!


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## Isamurat (Jul 27, 2012)

Mine get quite a few tiny seeds lol, there so good at foraging now they can find and eat linseed hidden in the substrate. They do claim I starve them though, despite the judge at the show last week saying they were a tiny bit overweight.


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## jadeelizabeth (Jul 26, 2012)

Awh bless! Mine just throw the seeds out the cage XD


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## Ratzy (Apr 6, 2012)

I personally trust Oxbow products. I did a lot of research on small animal feeds when I had my rabbits and Oxbow was far and away the most impressive in balanced nutrition, quality control, etc. So, that is the company I trust now for feeding my rats.

I am in the U.S., but Oxbow sells through retailers online: http://www.oxbowanimalhealth.com/contact/find_products/online_store_locator

I don't know if shipping is prohibitively expensive for you in the UK, but check it out ..... but it's always good to give ratties a daily veg salad to supplement the chow. I also supplement with healthy people food that I eat as treats daily (teeny portions!), but their primary diet is the Oxbow. I haven't heard any vet or anyone else ever say anything bad about Oxbow. Their quality control is excellent and their formulas are based on science and nutritional needs of the species.


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

Isamurat said:


> Cagebirdsing - one advantage of living in the UK is that getting hold of minimally processed grains (like you'd find in the better mixes) is easy. You can get them cheaply in large amounts from farm and equine shops and you can get them in small amounts from rat rations, though it is more expensive with postage. It makes making your own mix much more rewarding.


Forgot to follow up on this thread.

You guys in the UK are definitely spoiled in that aspect! It can be difficult to locate resources and get all of the grains needed for a great dry mix here in the US, depending on where you live, but I reside in a rural area with plenty of fresh grain. It's partly why I decided to begin selling my mix, because I know that not everyone here in the US has access.


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

Ratzy said:


> I personally trust Oxbow products. I did a lot of research on small animal feeds when I had my rabbits and Oxbow was far and away the most impressive in balanced nutrition, quality control, etc. So, that is the company I trust now for feeding my rats.
> 
> I am in the U.S., but Oxbow sells through retailers online: http://www.oxbowanimalhealth.com/contact/find_products/online_store_locator
> 
> I don't know if shipping is prohibitively expensive for you in the UK, but check it out ..... but it's always good to give ratties a daily veg salad to supplement the chow. I also supplement with healthy people food that I eat as treats daily (teeny portions!), but their primary diet is the Oxbow. I haven't heard any vet or anyone else ever say anything bad about Oxbow. Their quality control is excellent and their formulas are based on science and nutritional needs of the species.


Shipping Oxbow to the UK is definitely not worth it. They have excellent resources over there for foods. Folks in the UK have it right about rat nutrition!

As is the American way, our products are more about convenience and low production costs. This includes Oxbow, but that's all in other threads that I've participated in.


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## Isamurat (Jul 27, 2012)

cagedbirdsinging said:


> Forgot to follow up on this thread.
> 
> You guys in the UK are definitely spoiled in that aspect! It can be difficult to locate resources and get all of the grains needed for a great dry mix here in the US, depending on where you live, but I reside in a rural area with plenty of fresh grain. It's partly why I decided to begin selling my mix, because I know that not everyone here in the US has access.


I used to do that too, before we could get grains and the rest in small amounts. I ended up persuading a parrot food specialist to branch out into a few rat specific things. They now are rat rations and do more rat business than parrot business lol. Still there's a much larger group of people who seem to want to feed good quality mixes in the UK. I know in the us rodent blocks and similar are a lot more popular.


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

Isamurat said:


> I used to do that too, before we could get grains and the rest in small amounts. I ended up persuading a parrot food specialist to branch out into a few rat specific things. They now are rat rations and do more rat business than parrot business lol. Still there's a much larger group of people who seem to want to feed good quality mixes in the UK. I know in the us rodent blocks and similar are a lot more popular.


I'm grabbing a copy of The Scuttling Gourmet from RR to have shipped over here to me. Very eager to read it and pair it with all of the research I've been doing online. I think I may have been born in the wrong country! I love the UK ideas on rat nutrition and I feel as though the US is very behind.

I blame the general US tendency toward blocks on a lack of knowledge in other options and lack of availability. I am setting out on the ambitious journey to change both!


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## Isamurat (Jul 27, 2012)

I am pretty sure you can get the scuttling gormet as an e-book if you've not ordered it yet, i am actually tempted to get one of those as well as my hard copy lol, it would be handy to have as a reference when i'm not at home but i love reading my hard copy. It's a really good book, a lot of info in there and Alison, the author, has tried to present info rather than opinions in most cases (she's no more a fan of pelleted food than we are) so you get to make your own mind up. If you have any questions from it let me know, Alison is a good friend and we do talk a lot so i may be able to fill in some of the blanks.

I've got to say even in the UK things have moved no massively over the past few years. At one point everyone fed either a good rabbit mix (better option) or your bog standard rat foods (most not good at all). Then Alison adapted sueebee's mix for the uk for the first shunamite diet (with rabbit food base) which started a better understanding of what was needed. Then it moved on a bit and some of us started using mixed straights as a base as the main rabbit food used (alpha herbal) got a bit dusty and some of the ingredients changed. In fact in one section you can see one of my early straights based mixes (my names Jemma, it's one of 2 mixes written in there other than Alison's) which led to the next big change where it's become pretty normal to use a lot of straights in the mixes.

I will say don't be afraid of trying to make big changes, when i first started feeding straights i had a lot of people who were dead set against it. Since then it's really popular amongst the internet rat fanciers (check out fancy rats forum for inspiration and a bit of support if you need it). I still feed a variation on that, but part with a nice rabbit food (makes it a lot easier to meet the vitamins and minerals requirements, and i've finally found a rabbit food i like the quality of). It works brill. I'll try and start a thread with what i feed now on it if you want.


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

Oh, no, I already have my own diet formulated very carefully, though as with all good diets, they do evolve over time and shift with your rats. I'm not looking for advice in particular. I just love to absorb knowledge, so I'm looking forward to the book to add to all of the research I did to make my diet, parts of which I sell due to the US not having great access to such things.

I frequent that UK forum, even though I'm a lurker. Great info there.


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## Isamurat (Jul 27, 2012)

Sorry didn't mean I thought you needed to change, just that there's loads on there, and I personally like looking at other peoples diets for ideas. I'll be adding dried cabbage to my next batch which I've nabbed from your diet lol. And some coconut flakes which I stole from someone else. I've recently tried fennel and cumin seeds which have gone down well, again a borrowed idea. I don't make so many big changes now, but what I feed is very fluid within a set of rules and some gut feel too.


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## cagedbirdsinging (May 28, 2012)

Isamurat said:


> Sorry didn't mean I thought you needed to change, just that there's loads on there, and I personally like looking at other peoples diets for ideas. I'll be adding dried cabbage to my next batch which I've nabbed from your diet lol. And some coconut flakes which I stole from someone else. I've recently tried fennel and cumin seeds which have gone down well, again a borrowed idea. I don't make so many big changes now, but what I feed is very fluid within a set of rules and some gut feel too.


We should make a thread on homemade/fresh diets to compare and give each other and other people that are new to the concept some ideas.


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