Bug Treats

I have a colony of dubia roaches that I'm growing up to sustain a bearded dragon when I purchase one at the end of the summer. Can I feed some of these roaches to the rats? I know crickets and mealworms are fine, but are dubia as well?

The thing about dubia roaches is that the females take 5 months or so to get to breeding size. I wouldn't feed out of your colony until you have 50+ adult females. As for feeding roaches to the rats, I'm not sure why you would want to. I don't think there is harm in it if they actually eat them, but they should be getting all of their nutrition from plant matter.

I've been growing out the colony for nearly 6 months now. I have at least 30-40 adult females (I've not counted them in a long time...I just feed and water them). Nothing is eating them so they are growing and breeding to their heart's content. As for feeding them, I just wasn't sure if you could feed them as an occasional treat. I've never fed my rats bugs but I was just curious if you COULD, not necessarily that I would. It was just more for expanding my knowledge. My rats get Mazuri 6F, Pedigree Large Breed dog food (pregnant and nursing moms only) and then occasional veggie/fruit treat. Bugs aren't on their menu.

No reason not to what-so-ever! :)
Have at it!

Great healthy treat for the rats with plenty of good nutrients! :gj:
Bugs are a very common part of a wild rodent diet.


I feed my cockroaches cockatiel food, which is basically tons of ground up veggies and grains made into colorful little pellets. It's got tons of vitamins in it, so I like to think that atleast some of that gets passed on to my reptiles and rodents.

I make my own roach food. I use chick feed, tropical fish flakes, and whole grain cheerios. The mixture is probably 3 parts chick feed, 2 parts whole grain cheerios, and a dash of fish flakes. Not sure how nutritious that is for the rodents, but my roaches seem to love it and they are thriving ever since I started making my own food for them.

In the past when I had a colony of Dubia I fed plenty off to my rats. I found that some loved them, and some did not and generally they preferred the smaller ones. Mealworms are also a great treat you could try, all my rats go nuts for them.

The rats love Dubia!

And meal worms are rat crack!

Just don't feed too much. It's great as a weekly treat or so for non-breeding rats.

And its ok to feed a little extra to pregnant/nursing mamas. Great source of extra protein and fat to keep up their energy.

I also like the birdalicious bug bite treats from Wild Birds Unlimited. They're basically little balls of beef suet, some blueberries, and crunched up meal worms. Yum.