Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've been reading a lot about breeding feeder rats over the past few weeks since I was given a small colony, cages, and supplies for free from a friend that's moving away, and I've noticed that a lot of you emphasize the importance of feeding the breeders diets relatively high in protein. The person that was maintaining the colony I currently have before me had been feeding the rats soley on 4-grain horse feed, and they appear large, healthy, and have allready been producing a lot of babies, that seem to be growing fast and healthy (my latest new litter was 22 babies to one female) Obviously the 4-grain feed has very little to no protein, and I'm curious as to why a higher protein food is better. The 4 grain food is about 6 dollars for a 50 pound bag, which is very economical, but if it's bad for my colony I'd certainly make the switch to something else. Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me. The decision to start breeding my own rats was to save as much money as possible, but if buying more expensive food for the breeders will be better for them or the snakes, that's a corner I don't want to cut.

What brand of horse feed are you feeding them. Where is it from? Sounds like a good deal for 50lbs also. If they are producing fine and are healthy on that mixture of food then I would leave it alone. When I had tons of rats I fed them Ol' Roy dog food from Walmart. They seemed very healthy on that the whole time I feed them. I tried switching to lab blocks and they didn't seem to do as good and didn't like the food as much. If they are producing fine then stay with the diet you have them on. I also think mice need alot more protein than rats do also.

I threw the bag away with the brand name on it, but I know several companies make similar types of feed because there were several to choose from that fit the description the previous owner gave me. Basically it's "4-grain" feed, the description the previous owner gave me was, "this is the stuff we used to feed our horses if we needed to put weight on them" I guess it makes the rats a little plumper too, and she said that when they stopped breeding on a different grain food, they switched to this stuff and hadn't had any problems since. I get the food at a feed store locally. I also get bedding for the rats at a feed store as opposed to a pet store because it's a LOT cheaper. 8 cubic feet for 6 bucks. Yes it's PINE, which I hear can cause respitory infections over time, but in my oppinion, none of the rats are living in those cages long enough to suffer any ill effects from a cheaper bedding, especially because they live in wire cages, outside, full time, where they get excellent ventilation. So, in total I have 2 males and 4 females, each of the females producing an average of 10-15 babies every couple of weeks, and the only money I spend on them is 6 bucks every couple months on food, and 6 bucks every couple of months on bedding. Not bad.

Use the horse grain if it's working good for you. Varying the diet a little leads healthy rodents though. I use various bags of feeds from the feed store too. I know they always stress about using pine bedding but the feed stores generally carry a kiln-dried finer type of pine. I've using it for a long time without any worries either.

if you are using horse grain for rats then you need to give the rats some meat as well. Horses eats a vegitarian diet, no meats (I hope! lol) and rats eat meat as well as veggies. So a little animal meat is needed or you might see cannabilisim in the future.

Throwing in a handfull of dog food once a week should be fine.
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1.1 Ball Python, 0.1 motley amel corn, 1.0 western hognose, 1.0 red blood

Thats a very nice story but the reason people stress protien rich diets is because low protein promotes cannibalism and with that high yield of babies and low protein the babies will be under nurished and will probably not provide enough nourishment.
Double Ds

Thanks for the input. As soon as I started reading the info about protein I began adding some dog food to their diets and they're doing well. I had heard about the cannibalism before, but was just curious since it hadn't occured in the past year the colony had been producing. Anyway, thanks again. The rats are doing well and enjoying the added protein in their diets.
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1.0 8' albino burmese
1.0 14' normal burmese
1.0 4' normal retic
0.1 5' bcc
0.0.1 nile monitor
3.0 cats
and a breeder rat colony