Doggie bag feed for rats

[BuckeyeBalls]

I'll pipe in on the doggie bag, being "good"....

It's crap.
Personally, I would only use it on weaned rats that are intended for a very short life...There are those who will argue, but like I said, that's my personal feeelings on doggy bag....

Alright everyone bashing doggy bag can you tell me why?

It has 2% more protein.

The same crude fat content.

Tho the fiber is 6% higher. Does this change anything?

I have never used it, so i cant say its good or not. I currently use mazuri 6f and im thinking about switching over to doggy bag once this last bag runs out.

To me they both seem pretty similar besides the +2% protein (tho i thought more protein was better?) and +6% fiber

[jasbus]

I used it, I did trials on it, I don't use it anymore.

On mice, they always had greasy hair and smelled way worse than on rodent diet.
Rats, I did a side by side trial and noticed a very significant drop in production and had more cannibalism as well. Not to mention, they seemed to love the stuff and ate way more of it. I was almost going through two 40lb bags of the stuff compared to one 50lb rodent diet per week. And, the chunks are a tad smaller, so I was getting more wasted food that fell into the tubs. So, I found that between the fact that my number of babies was less, and they ate some of the babies, together with the fact that I was feeding them more of the doggy bag, meant an obvious change back to rodent diet for me. I have also found that my TSC now sells doggy bag for $18 for 40lb bag now, which is more than I pay for 50lb rodent diet....
These are my finding, on my rodents.... Not saying you can't do it, but that's my story.

[FatBoy]

Where are you finding the Rodent 6F for less than Doggie Bag? Here DB is $12.99/40lbs. I used to pay $50/25lbs for M6F. That was a nobrainer for me. They do seem to eat more DB and when I switched and had both feed in the racks they would actually eat around the 6F to get to the DB. Since switching I have noticed slightly unhealthier adults with shorter life span. The production for me increased. I did not notice larger liters but just more liters in general. I even feed DB to my dogs and potbellied pig!! Around my house it's all Doggie Bag all the time.

[BuckeyeBalls]

Where are you finding the Rodent 6F for less than Doggie Bag? Here DB is $12.99/40lbs. I used to pay $50/25lbs for M6F. That was a nobrainer for me. They do seem to eat more DB and when I switched and had both feed in the racks they would actually eat around the 6F to get to the DB. Since switching I have noticed slightly unhealthier adults with shorter life span. The production for me increased. I did not notice larger liters but just more liters in general. I even feed DB to my dogs and potbellied pig!! Around my house it's all Doggie Bag all the time.

See for me doggy bag is 10 cents cheaper compared to 6f. So iv been deciding rather to switch to doggy bag or use 6f.

Cuz i pay like $23 for a bag of 6f. TSC says they have 40lb bags for $14 so iv been trying to weigh the options rather to stay 6f or switch over to doggy bag.

Would cost me $10 more per 100 lbs of feed to feed 6f.

I guess i may just switch to doggy bag.... and see how i like it and how long it last. Tho it seems from what you guys have said they eat more of it.

[Amon Ra Reptiles]

Ad much as I have stood up for TSC doggy bag in the past, I guess I'm kind of on the fence about it now. I have 18 tubs of rats going (give or take) and 6 tubs of ASFs. We have had a real tough time with the ASFs and Becky has talked me out of freezing all of them more than once. Lol. These things have eaten their young like mad for us! They have also been slow producers. I realize they reproduce slower than a standard rat but these seem REALLY slow.

Anyway we were feeding all TSC until about 2 weeks ago. We even tried supplementing with peanuts which seemed to help but we were still having a lot of cannibalism. Then we were told to try mazuri. We have noticed an almost complete halt of the cannibalism. We went from like 3-4 dead a day to 2-3 in 2 weeks!!!

Now, we have also added shell corn at the suggestion of a local breeder but only the past 3-4 days so the cannibalism stopped before that.

I continue to feed TSC to my standard rats as I have had very little to almost no cannibalism in my rats but I am considering conducting a little experiment:

I'm thinking I may set up a new six tub rack with each tub being raised from weaning in groups of 1.5, 3 tubs being fed mazuri 6f and 3 tubs being fed TSC. Then I could track growth rate and eventual litter size from all involved females.

I have heard that mazuri yields bigger litters and the rats consume less which leads to less peeing and pooping which in turn would lead to less bedding use hence making mazuri cheaper in the long run.

Has anyone attempted this or had similar production increases and decreased food use with mazuri? Also, is there anything anyone would suggest doing differently in my experiment?

And lastly, what brands of rodent block are out there? The only one I have seen really is Mazuri but may be able to find a suitable substitute cheaper here in Ohio.

[BuckeyeBalls]

Well Scott I have the past 5 months of my rat production recorded. The amount of rats born alive/dead. The amount that are killed off after being born. While i rarely loose any rats between the one mom giving me a little of 12 dead ones and a first time mom we have (the only rex) being a bad mom and refusing to feed a few had died. But overall 9/11 of my female breeding rats seem to be consistent.

So what im going to do is switch over to the doggy bag and continue to record the same breeders and see if i notice a change in health, litter size, the amount of ones killed/eaten.


Good luck with your project

[Amon Ra Reptiles]

Well looks like you're switching one way and I'm switching the other so it will be interesting to see the results of our work in a few months.

[jasbus]

Well, I posted again to this thread a couple of days ago, with my findings on my trial, but it's not on here anymore. Guess a mod deleted it?
Anyway, I used DB on one of my 14 bin rat racks, kept records on it and the rack next to it on ADM rodent blocks. Except for an occasional dead birth, I had no cannibalism on my ADM rack. On average, the litters were significantly larger on my ADM rack. And, I had a couple of adult deaths in the DB racks as well.

Now, I used to use DB on my mice and ASF's as well. Mice suck on DB. Too much cannibalism, numbers were down probably 60-70 percent. ASF's, as we all know are complete sex addicts. On DB, I hardly ever had babies. Since taking them off of DB and putting them back on rodent diet, I'm literally overflowing with ASF's, and I don't have a large colony(at least I didn't). Now, I'm constantly seperating males, and I can't feed them off fast enough. Almost every reptile in my store and my personal collection has been on an ASF diet for months.
I know there are plenty of people out there using it, and probably without any problems, but in my case, I was losing tons of money on the stuff.

[VicShell]

i just switched from db to 6f for my breeders and kent 23% for my growups only 12 bucks for the kent and all in all the smell is less waste is way less and bigger litters and no greasy rats anymore for the few extra dollars hands down food made for rats seems to equal more healthy happier rats and happier wife and kids with the less smell. local feed store orders anything i can find so it should be easy to get

[Region Reptiles]

I have been using doggy bag dog food for over a year now on both rats and ASF's and my production has changed for the better 60 tubs of rats and ASF's I will be buying more doggy bag