Is there a way to make your own rat blocks?

Question

I want to make a homemade diet for my rats, but I was wondering if there was a way to perhaps bake them into cubes, so all their nutrition is there. I have two rats and I am sure that one would get more then the other if they were not placed in cubes.

Answer 1

The only thing I could think of is grinding all the food in a blender to a powder, add egg and flour then bake it. But I don't think your rat would like it very much. I know I wouldn't  like my breakfast,lunch, and dinner in one thing 0_0

The rat who gets more is the dominate one, either way it will eat more than the other one, if you feed them enough there shouldn't be a problem, I have 5 rats and have realized the pecking order so I always check the lowest ranking 2 to see if they are getting enough and they are just fine.

Though a homemade diet you could make without putting it into blocks is

Dried Banana

Dried Apple

Dried Carrot

Dried Broccoli

Rolled oats [plain oatmeal]

Unsalted sunflower seeds

Plain cheerios

Plain wheat puff cereal [not rice krispies]

Total Cereal

Uncooked pasta

Crushed Milkbone dog treats

It's based off the Suebee diet with a few things added and taken away

You can buy dried fruit or you can make it yourself.

here's a link how:

http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/foods/348-597...

but even if you put it in the blocks one would still eat more blocks then the other.

If it's a problem, just use a bigger bowel so that when one rat eats until it's full there will be plenty left for the other.

Answer 2

I dont really have an answer for this, but I do have two great websites that I used to get recipes for homemade food. Hope these help...

http://hubpages.com/hub/Homemade-Rat-Die...

http://www.spoiledratten.com/feedingcont...

Answer 3

I would think it would be hard to make lab blocks similar to commercial blocks.  You could probably figure out a way to make blocks of some sort, but I'm sure the commercial blocks are made with specialized machines so that their ingredients are standardized.  (In fact, if you're concerned about standardizing their nutrition, commercial blocks are probably more reliable.)

I don't think you should worry if one rat gets a little more than the other unless, for instance, it's a situation where the one rat is actually possessive over the food bowl and actually blocks access to the other.   Many, many rat owners feed their rats fresh food from a communal bowl and the rats manage to thrive.  Moreover, it's important for the rats to have some raw food in their diet, so blocks -- homemade or commercial -- should be supplemented with fresh veggies and fruits anyway.

To make it easy on yourself, I would suggest just buying your rats a commercial block -- Harlan Teklad is widely regarded as the best.  You can get it from www.ratshop.com (it's not sold in the average pet store).   I would stay away from the lower quality stuff you find in the chain petstores.  Then give them some veggies and fruits each day and don't worry if one gets a little more than the other sometimes.  They'll be fine.