What should you feed your rats?
Homemade vs lab blocks/pellets
First you need to decide if you'd rather do a homemade diet or a store bought pellet/lab block. Homemade diets provide excellent enrichment and the ability to change your protein/fat percentages to fit your individual rats. However, formulating diets takes a lot of research and understanding of nutrition to be sure you are providing adequate vitamins/minerals/carbs/protein/fat. Lab blocks/pellets are a perfectly suitable option if formulating diets isn't for you!
Commercial Pellets/Blocks
This is an easily available food found at most pet stores. This diet has 15% protein, which is ideal for adult rats. It is also low in fat. It provides all the necessary vitamins and minerals your rats need without needing to supplement anything. This can be fed to young rats as well but they would need to be supplemented additional protein (like eggs, chicken, salmon, dried insects, ect) until they reach adult hood around 6 months. I like the added prebiotics and antioxidants in this feed and I also like that the first ingredient is brown rice.
Oxbow Essentials Young Rat and Mouse
This is a suitable food found at most pet stores for rats under 6 months old. This food is too high in protein for adult rats. The first ingredient is corn, which isn't ideal for rats but it is a nutritionally complete diet for young rats.
This is an excellent choice but isn't as easily available at local pet stores. This can be purchased on Amazon though. Young rats would need additional protein supplemented for the first 6 months. This is a very popular choice that rats seem to do well on.
Another food that is available online and occasionally found in local pet stores. This is a very high protein diet so we don't recommend it for adult rats. This is a nutrionally complete diet that works well for rats under 6 months though.
Homemade "Shunamite" Diets
We make our own feed based off the Shunamite Diet. These diets are specially formulated with great thought and research on every ingredient. The Shunamite Diet is a nutritionally balanced diet that mimics the natural diet rats eat by providing a large selection of ingredients. The base consists of a variety of whole grains then protein sources are added in such as dried insects, freeze dried salmon, freeze dried minnows, and fish based dog food. Next we add in processed grains, which are especially important for adult male rats to prevent kidney disease. We add in a variety of dried vegetables as well as a variety of fatty seeds. Lastly we add in a small percentage of “extras” such as kelp, freeze dried fruits, dried flowers, ect.
We make formulas for adult does at 14 to 16% protein and aim for 5% fat. For young rats and breeding does we use this diet and supplement extra protein.
For males and senior rats we formulate a kidney friendly diet that excludes things like wheat, has a higher amount of processed grains, and a lower protein content.
We offer feed for sale for $11/lb (this price may fluctuate some based on the cost of ingredients)
More information about the Shunamite Diet can be found at: https://shunamiterats.co.uk/about-this-site/
Another great source with guides on formulating rat diets is the Facebook Group: Shunamite Diet USA
Vitamin and Calcium Supplements
If feeding homemade diets it is essential that you supplement Vitamins and Calcium!
This vitamin supplement is a bird supplement that is also appropriate for rats! This is mixed into their water 5 days per week. Mix ¼ tsp with 100 ml of water. It does go bad quickly so you want to only offer what your rat needs per day. To figure out how much your rats need, weigh your rats on a gram scale (available on amazon or at Walmart). Add all of your rats weights together. You will offer 100 ml of the vitamin/water mixture per 1000 grams of rat weight in your cage.
This is a Calcium supplement that mixes into your rats water. This is only given 3 times a week with at least a day off in between. This is given at 0.1 ml per 100 grams of weight. Or 1.0 ml per 1000 grams of total weight in your rat cage.