Trying to make use of my dust

[KING JAMES]

I used to use the dust at the bottom of my rat food bags to feed crickets and roaches..I have stopped breeding crickets and roaches though leaving me with large amount of fine rat food powder at the bottom of my feed bin.

I have decided to try and use that dust as a base to make cheap rat treats. Is there anything else I can add to this recipe to get more bang for my buck?

8 cups rat food dust (kents 19%)
2 Cups alfalfa pellets
2 Large Cored apples
2 Over Ripe bananas
8 Hard boiled eggs
2 Cups stale popcorn

I mixed the pellets with water first as they have to soak a bit to break apart enough to mix in with other ingredients. Once they had became good and mushy I added all the other ingredient (shells included in the eggs) and used my hands to smash / mix everything together. I have them in the oven set at 400 now.

Looking for suggestions as to good ways to tweak this recipe as I have probably around 30-40lbs of this dust sitting around

[Rhasputin]

I feel like the eggs might be weird if they were hard boiled first. But other than that it should be good.

[KING JAMES]

I would have used regular ones but I have about 2 dozen hard boiled eggs that no one in the house was going to eat LOL

[Pyrate81]

This is a great idea. I find there is a lot of dust at the bottom of my bin as well. Thanks for the idea.


I throw mine an ocasional carrot or blueberry. Sometimes dip the carrot in peanut butter.

[Wapadi]

I take the dust and put in in my weaner tub and they eat it right up!

[KING JAMES]

I feed the small chunks to my weans. I have a scoop made out of 1/4 hardware mesh for the adults then window screen size stuff for the weans but the dust I needed to find a use for. Ran into one issue with this..the eggs bieng hard boiled is a bad idea. Raw eggs would help as a binder but hard boiled do not. I cook them and then they fall apart.

[kc261]

I've thought about doing this. My recipe was going to be very simple: rat food dust mixed with paper mache paste made from all purpose flour. Adjust amounts as needed to make a thick dough, spoon it onto a baking sheet just like you would cookies, and bake on low until hard & dry. If desired, you could add extra stuff for flavor to make treats. NOTE: I have not actually tried this, but it sure seems like it would work.

As far as your recipe, I wonder why you are adding the alfalfa pellets. I've heard that rats can't digest alfalfa. (OK, so I decided to google before hitting that "submit" button, and it seems that maybe this is a myth?)

Other than that, I think your recipe sounds fine. Go ahead and use the hard boiled eggs, since you have them on hand, but make a paper mache paste to hold it all together.

Because of the ingredients in your that could spoil, I would recommend you either make it in small batches that you can use up quickly, or freeze whatever you don't use right away until you are ready to use it.

[KING JAMES]

I have a bunch of pellets that I have no use for and they have calcium in them. These treats are for my breeder females so calcium / fat are a good thing