Food quality

[tweets_4611]

I've been looking around at the different diets that people use for their mice, and I have hit a few differences. I know everyone feeds something different, I'm just curious why.

The Mazuri lab block seems to be a pretty commonly accepted feed. The only one I had ever heard of was the 6f, until I went to their site. They actually recommend the 9f for "high producing mice". Why isn't this used? Lack of availability? Or price?

The Mazuri mouse and rat food has much more protein (23% instead of 16%) than the lab blocks. What does the protein levels effect? Is it better to have more, or less, for a colony?

I'm just looking for any info, so I can tighten the food search a bit. I don't know that I'm going to be able to get anything of any real quality here in town, so when I do go out of town, I'd like to have an idea of what I'm looking for. So far I'm looking for a protein content of about 20% and fat at about 6-10%.

Any foods to just stay away from?

[kc261]

A quality diet is important, however, there are MANY ways to get there. I think the reason Mazuri 6F is so popular is that almost any Purina dealer can order it for you, so it is readily available. It is a good diet for both rats & mice, while the 9F is better for mice only (I think the rats don't need the higher fat). Also, I believe the 9F is more expensive, and since people are having fine results with the 6F, why pay more?

I experimented with several different foods and did a lot of research when I was starting my mouse colony. I started with hog food as the main food, supplementing with a few things, mostly sunflower seed to bring the fat content up. That worked ok, but I got tired of mixing stuff together, so then I went with Mazuri 6F. I then happened to find a place where I could get Purina's LabDiet 5P00 for a lower price, so I tried that. I didn't notice a significant different with any of the food, so I'm sticking with the LabDiet, since it is the best combination of cheap & easy.

Also, somewhere along the line, I found research that indicated that different strains of mice do better with different protein content in their food, and even at different life stages within the same strain of mouse. So there is no such thing as "the perfect mouse food". Not surprising when you think about it. So at that point, I decided that if I am just consistent with always using the LabDiet, and select the biggest, healthiest, best producing mice, I will gradually create my own strain of mice that is perfectly suited to the food I am feeding.

[tweets_4611]

Thanks! Right now I just have a Wal-Mart type lab block, and I've added some high quality dog food. Once I'm able to get to Tulsa there is a store there that shows that they have the Mazuri diets (I'm not sure which, I figure I'll find out when I go ) I have been compairing some things online, but there isn't much in the way of food that I can get easily, so if I can get my hands on something that works for so many people, I'm going to while I can.