Keeping rodents healthy on dog food

[dries]

Greetings,
I'm wondering if anyone has personal experience with feeding their rats or mice exclusively dogfood.
I find lab pellets a bit expensive and i'm wondering if i can replace it with low-protein dogfood, which is obviously cheaper and way easier for me to get.
Number one priority is the quality of the rodents tho so i'm not even gonna bother if it will make them less healthy.
but hey, money don't grow on trees amirite?

cheers

[piedlover79]

Here is a thread on the forum on feeding rats dog food

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...-Rats-Dog-Food

[Stewart_Reptiles]

Yes it can be done, the things you must look for are protein content (ideal being 18%), and red die (which you need to avoid)

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[Freakzter]

I also find the lab blocks too pricey since I can't find them in bulk. so I stretch it out by having that make up only about %10 of their diet. the rest is %30 hog feed, %30 dog food (whatever big bag my local thrift store has on sale with decent ingredients), and the remainder is birdseed, cereal, and veggie leftovers. for me it makes for a very affordable diet that I feel guarentees nutritious feeders. it also ensures that they do not get used to any specific brand or type of food.

[Aceboas]

I am a breeder way back in the day I used dog food. It's not near as healthy as Mazuri 6F but they will survive on it.. Oily as hell coats and the smell goes way up.

[PitOnTheProwl]

I am a breeder way back in the day I used dog food. It's not near as healthy as Mazuri 6F but they will survive on it.. Oily as hell coats and the smell goes way up.

I have never had either problem with Mazuri or Doggy Bag BUT none of my rats would eat the Purina Lab Blocks. Also they would eat their litters with the Purina stuff.
Also now that I am thinking about it and this was brought up again........ None of my rats have had any tumors after not using Mazuri. J/S

[Aceboas]

Back in the day I used Doggy Bag I see a huge difference in rats fur on Mazuri. There was a time I was producing 500 pinks a week. Funny this topic came up thinking of ramping production up again.

[Black Swamp]

I feed my mice a blend of doggy bag and mazuri 6f, and my rats get pig pellets. I'd love to feed just mazuri, but I can't afford to do that right now. I did notice a decrease in productivity when I switched from straight mazuri to mazuri and doggy bag for my rats. That's why they're on pig pellets instead of doggy bag. I'd give the mice pig pellets too, but they're very wasteful when I try. My thoughts on doggy bag vs pig pellets as a feed choice is that the requirements/regulations/whatever for ingredient quality and sourcing is different for feed meant for food animals than it is for feed meant for companion animals. I don't trust the quality/source of the ingredients in doggy bag, even though my rodents do fine on it. I.E. no obvious health issues other than a bit longer in between litters, and pups that aren't as fat as I'd like them to be. I can second that the smell is worse when feeding doggy bag, but I think that's because it doesn't have yucca extract in it. Rabbit feed has yucca extract to cut down on the ammonia smell. I figure that's why they put it in other feeds as well.