Making up your own rat feed

[shellanne]

I could be wrong, but i thought I read that other members make up their own rat food mixture, and I was wondering if you could please post your recipes... I'd love to make my own mixture and would love ideas for it. Thanks so much

[insanity]

I bought a pack of 'Living World Classic' which has lasted a month. It has loads of seeds in there, some of which the rats eat and some they just throw away.

I put in about a third of the seed mixture, one third dog biscuits and one third lentil soup mix (which has mostly lentils, but some beans - they don't eat the kidney beans either).

I've found they like gnawing open whole peanuts (they're only like $5/kilo which lasts ages), but I don't put them in their regular diet, I think they might have too much fat in them. The peanuts are awesome because they take them back to their nest to open them - so if one of the rats escapes, if you give him a peanut he has about a 50% chance of running back into the cage to eat it. Which makes escapes a lot easier to handle.

They also like yoghurt, but again its too fat-rich to be part of their regular diet so I only use it to train them.

[shellanne]

Thanks for that info....where do you get "Living world classic" from?

I love the idea of the peanuts too...especially for using on escapees lol. I've had a few too many close calls lately...

Has anyone heard of yoghurt drops? And what does everyone think of chocolate? I would only use each as a treat... not part of regular diet...

[insanity]

Any pet store that sells rats. I don't think this feed better or worse than any other brand though, I just picked the one that looked like it had the most seeds.

If you find a place to buy yoghurt drops, I'd be keen to know

Rats have the same digestive problems with chocolate that dogs and cats do; you won't be able to reach the lethal dose with any sane portion of chocolate.