Feeding My Rats

Feeding a healthy diet is the first step towards trying to extend their lifespan. I want to find out how much I can affect the lifespan of my rats by improving their diet and exercise habits before I begin to see if I can breed for longevity. My approach is not to micro-manage their diet, but to give a broad range of healthy foods to ensure they receive everything they need.

Dry Mix

Now that I have 30+ rats I tend to use 'straights' (flaked barley, maize, peas and wheat plus rolled oats) with a small amount of breakfast cereal to add interest and variety, and sometimes a packet of dried mealworms or mixed seed or nuts stirred in. I like Kallo puffed rice as it doesn't have any sugar and salt added. Chick peas are supposedly a good source of copper. I add maybe 5% of pasta and some soya flakes in my standard mix (I used to use dog kibble but I believe soya flakes are a safer protein source than pet grade meat products). I add some higher protein supplements for young, growing rats. My rats are all looking healthy and shiny on this diet, with no obese rats in my rattery at present. I can't claim that no rat would ever get fat on this diet, as I have had overweight ones in the recent past.

The dry mix is scattered into the cage substrate after the rats in each cage have been out for freerange. This gives them an incentive to come back to the cage promptly so I don't spend too much time rat hunting under the furniture. Scattering the food encourages natural foraging behaviour, provides enrichment activity, stops the dominant rat hogging the food and helps to prevent obesity. I weigh the food out and adjust it according to the requirements of each cage judging by the weight and condition of the rats. Generally does require less than bucks, and both sexes require less food as they age.

In answer to comments I've had, the rats use the back corners of their cages for toiletting, so I don't feel that scattering their food is less hygienic than using bowls. There is no remaining mix evident when I clean out the cages, so I'm not worried about it going off or attracting pests.

Fresh Foods

My rats have fresh food every morning. I generally just raid the fridge and fruit bowl or pick forage on my way home from work, though the family had never been fed kale before we had rats! The ratties tend to get: curly kale, broccoli, clover, dandelion leaf, carrot, cauliflower, apple, pear, grapes, capsicum, sweetcorn, peas, cucumber, kiwi fruit.Some of these are more nutritious than others, especially the first four on the list, but I figure that as long as they have a good variety they'll get what they need. Warning - they adore broccoli, but it makes the cages smell. Citrus peel is supposedly carcinogenic for bucks, but it's probably one of those things they'd need to eat mountains of to do any harm.

Leftovers

With their evening meal my rats get any suitable left-overs from our evening meal. They love bones to gnaw on, rice is popular, surprisingly they often prefer the vegetables to the meat they're given. I avoid giving them salty or spicy food, for my own sake as well as theirs as spices would make the cages smell more.

Treats

I'm afraid I'm not very good at giving my ratties treats. Bad mummy! Sometimes if they look interested in what we're eating they get a nibble, but by the way they receive their fruit and veg. I think they regard them as their treats.

Supplements

I use garlic powder and seaweed powder as a small addition to my dry mix. These used to stick quite well to the dog kibble when I used it, but now I'm using soya flakes it's not staying in the mix as well as it did. I also use Dr Squiggles Daily Essentials (vitamin powder added to water) in a bowl during freerange time, as my failsafe backup. I don't use it in their bottles as they like it so much they drink far more than usual and make the cages damp.

A smaller scale alternative

Before I had so many rats, I used a dry mix based on the 'Shunamite' diet.

The Shunamite Diet
The Shunamite Diet Explained

Everyone has a slightly different take on the this diet, because there is a lot of choice in the ingredients. The mix I used when I had smaller numbers of rats is as follows:

• 5 scoops of base mix - Alpha Herbal Rabbit Deluxe
• Half to 1 scoop of dog kibble - I usually use Burns or James Wellbeloved Senior. You're looking for a good quality food that doesn't have chicken sourced from overseas, where growth hormones may have been used.
• (Optional) 1 scoop of pasta - spirals or macaroni
• 3 scoops of breakfast cereals - choose the ones that have low sugar and salt content. Own brands and organic are often better for this than the well known brands.

Recommended book: The Scuttling Gourmet

Annette, March 2009