What Do Rats Eat?
Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2024 7:00 am
Rats are omnivores and enjoy a diverse diet having evolved to eat almost anything!
They favour grains and seeds and also eat insects, meat, fish (they LOVE prawns!), fruit, nuts, berries, plants and eggs.
You should avoid salty and spicy food, citrus fruits, rhubarb and personally I try to avoid anything from the onion family and don't feed mango to male rats as there have been links to food high in d-limonene causing tumours in males so wouldn't advise feeding it regularly.
For some reason, I assume down to cost, there is no quality convenience rat food available off the shelf at the pet shops!
A lot of keepers have turned to mixing their own. However if you only have a small number of rats this can be very costly and usually results in a lot of ingredients to store and too much food to get through before it goes out of date.
Fortunately there are folks like myself who keep a lot of rats which makes it worthwhile buying 100 kilos of grains at once
So its possible to buy mix from other people and you can find a link to my mixes further down the forum, named Lawsons Complete: Rat Pick n Mix
You should also feed a wide variety (but small amounts) of fresh feeds. Your rats can often just share a bit of whatever you're having!
Just think of them when you're having any fresh wholefoods and put a little aside.
This will not only lead to healthy rats alongside good exercise and healthcare, but it is their favourite source of enrichment.
It is really important to keep your rat's mentally stimulated but more about that in the Enrichment section!
They favour grains and seeds and also eat insects, meat, fish (they LOVE prawns!), fruit, nuts, berries, plants and eggs.
You should avoid salty and spicy food, citrus fruits, rhubarb and personally I try to avoid anything from the onion family and don't feed mango to male rats as there have been links to food high in d-limonene causing tumours in males so wouldn't advise feeding it regularly.
For some reason, I assume down to cost, there is no quality convenience rat food available off the shelf at the pet shops!
A lot of keepers have turned to mixing their own. However if you only have a small number of rats this can be very costly and usually results in a lot of ingredients to store and too much food to get through before it goes out of date.
Fortunately there are folks like myself who keep a lot of rats which makes it worthwhile buying 100 kilos of grains at once
So its possible to buy mix from other people and you can find a link to my mixes further down the forum, named Lawsons Complete: Rat Pick n Mix
You should also feed a wide variety (but small amounts) of fresh feeds. Your rats can often just share a bit of whatever you're having!
Just think of them when you're having any fresh wholefoods and put a little aside.
This will not only lead to healthy rats alongside good exercise and healthcare, but it is their favourite source of enrichment.
It is really important to keep your rat's mentally stimulated but more about that in the Enrichment section!