Quote Originally Posted by punyhuman07 View Post
i was at walmart to and was walking around the lawn and garden area and saw they had a 50 lb bag of this squirrel, chipmunk food. it had peanuts,soybeans,sunflower seed, ad some other stuff it looked really good. so i was wondering if this would be healthy for rats and mice to eat since they are simlar to squirrels and chipmunks. it was 9.99 a bag.
I don't think it would be bad as a treat, but definitely not a staple of their diet.

I would avoid completely the peanuts, and I'm not sure on raw soybeans, but I wouldnt feed those either just in case. I have read that ALL raw beans aren't good for them, so I'd lump them in there.

Sunflower seeds are perfectly fine, they will have a blast with those.

Just read your ingredients in the list and google them and see if any are forbidden to give to rats. Generally those sorts of list look like this, and will give a reason why.

http://www.ratfanclub.org/diet.html

Forbidden Foods

Generally, if you would eat a food, you can give it to your rats. Here are some exceptions and notables:
raw dry beans or peanuts—contains antinutrients that destroy vitamin A and enzymes needed to digest protein and starches, and causes red blood cells to clump
raw sweet potato—contains compounds that form cyanide in the stomach
green bananas—inhibits starch-digesting enzymes
green potato skin and eyes—contain solanine, a toxin
wild insects—can carry internal parasites and diseases
raw bulk tofu—can contain bacteria, packaged raw tofu is safe
orange juice—forbidden for male rats only, d-limonene in the skin oil, which gets into the orange juice during squeezing, can cause kidney damage and kidney cancer due to a protein that only male rats have in their kidneys. Pieces of the orange fruit are okay if you wash the orange-skin oil off of it after peeling it.