rat food

I have read a few threads on here about food...

I am not in a farm area. I am in the city... Can't exactly go to the corner farm store for supplies.

What is a good, quick trip to the grocery store (or walmart) for ingredients recepie?

Right now I am using the store bought rat food. I can see by what I have been reading it is not the best idea... Please give me some nice easy, inexpensive, healthy ideas

thanks for your time and help,

Mike

I've been using Becky's mix and my rats are loving it.

Here's a link to the sticky...

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=28391

woops, just saw becky;s recipe on sticky...

A good diet consists of:
-puffed wheat and rice
-cereals such as any of the Kashi brand
-cheerios
-tri-colored pasta
-old-fashioned oatmeal(rolled oats)
-dried split peas and lentils
-dried fruit and nut mix from Walmart


Please forgive me, may sound retarded here but:

what is puffed wheat and rice?

What is kashi brand?

Should it be equal amounts of all ingredients listed?

I keep seeing this mentioned... what exactly is a lab block?

thank you for all of your help!

Ok, puffed wheat and rice IS Kashi brand cereal. Kashi is the brand name and puffed wheat and rice is the type. It's at WalMart for like $2 a box.

Here: http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...=285150#285150
She gives a basic amount run down. Use your own discretion from there. I use separate cereal pouring containers for the dog food and lab block so I can add as much or as little as I want to the dishes.

Lab block is a basic, all inclusive rodent food that is in cylindrical block form. The best brand right now would be Mazuri...found here:http://www.mazuri.com/Home.asp?Products=2 It can also be found at Petsmart and probably other pet stores for about the same amount, but only in the 2lb bags.

Hope that helps :)

thanks for the help everyone! i did the recipe exactly as it said in Beckys link. It made A WHOLE LOT of rat food for about 22 bucks. and i still have lots of left over ingredients for the next batch.

I use Becky's mix with regal rat food.

Yea, I've been feeding a mix of "Ainmal Planet Rat and Mouse Food" and some cerial and rice.. And she's preggers and seems to be lovin it all :)

Lab blocks, as well as the occasional excpencive scoop of dog food, with tri-colored pasta, they get some Katee crap(leftover from when i couldnt get to the feed store.... some treats here and there... they seem to love it!:D Im sure you can find a feedstore, somewhere I live in a city too, and there are several.

i have used kent feeds rat food for awhile now and have never had any proplems with it and my rats all do good.. now the store near me has to order it for me but they get it fast. here's a link to see if you have a store near you and for a 50lb bag i only pay 12.00.
http://www.kentfeeds.com/Dealer-Locator.aspx

I follow Becky's dry mix but do change it up. Basically it's always equal parts of lab block and a good quality dog kibble as the base. To this I add whatever other dry things I find on sale or are the odds and ends of my own pantry. So one week I might add in dry pasta, nuts, bran cereal, puffed wheat, large flake oatmeal...another week it might be raisins or some left over chocolate chips or whatever. As long as it's dry and healthy, they pretty much love it.

I also keep a covered old plastic icecream container in the fridge. Into that goes all sorts of dinner leftovers and the rats get a few scoops of that twice a week. It's an awful mess to look at but boy the rats eat it up! Saves on wasting food...rats are the ultimate recyclers. They also love wing night around here. Bones are a huge favorite in the colony. The leftover cheesy potato/ham casserole was a bit hit the other night. LOL

Here's a handy link for "human" foods for rats...

http://www.ratnutrition.com/suppleme...forbiddenfoods