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04-06-2009, 05:47 AM
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Rat food
Not to sure if this should be in feeding section or here but we will try here and if it dont work or no replys ill put in feeding section Or if a mod wants to move please feel free............................
Right iv started breeding rats for my rep food I do give them allsorts honstly from dryed bog food to fruity rabbit food pluss pet treats and searial but am I doing right..........What should I be feeding or is this ok. I have just bought a rack that holds 15 cages ( ebay) and its bees knees id say i could put 3 adult females in each cage and still have a load of room. would i do best just to have a male or two and keep moving them around. And every now and again just buy a new male or two.........  http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=120426042050 The boxes look white in the pic but are clear .....Thank you..Brian Last edited by brian; 04-06-2009 at 06:08 AM.. 
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04-06-2009, 07:08 AM
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I find that buying "straights" - rolled or whole oats, rolled barley, rolled peas or corn - works well and is often less expensive than buying a LOT of premixed stuff.
My last mix was: 15 kilos each of rolled barley, rolled corn, whole oats 15 kilos terrier mix dog food 20 kilos molassed sugarbeet pellets (tried this, rats don't like it, won't use it again.) I like adding pig pellets or chicken layer pellets, but don't make the mistake I did and think that all chicken layer food is pellet form. I've got half a bag of layer meal, which can only be used if you add water to make a paste. The rats love it - but it's messy to make and feed. They get the chicken mash once a week or so, usually on a Saturday morning when I wind up getting up earlier than my partner. I also give treats - the occasional slice of stale bread, table scraps if there's a bit of leftover rice or pasta, and a handful of kale or spring greens on a regular basis. They also get any fruit or veg that's just gone past what I will eat (in the case of bananas that's "the peel is yellow, not green"). I'm betting your rack is rather like mine; they're brilliant cages (mine are solid grey rather than clear tubs). Looking at the photo, though, those metal grilles in the bottom of the cages will drive you insane. I'd pull them out if it were my rack; it'll be easier to clean if you can just pull out a cage, move the rats into a spare (I'd suggest only filling fourteen of the fifteen cages - keep one cage empty but with substrate; when you clean, move the first cageful of rats into the clean cage, fill water and food, dump subs out of the dirty cage and disinfect if necessary, add new subs, then repeat - it saves LOADS of time when you don't have to move rats into a holding box, then into a cage) without having to pull out a probably-mucky grate. I'd also worry about small babies getting under the grate and not getting food. Whether you keep one male permanently with each set of girls or whether you have separate boys depends on how reliable a supply of offspring you need and how many snakes you're trying to feed. With my mouths to feed, I need to know I'm going to have at least one litter per cage per month like clockwork, so I do house my boys with my girls year round. However, this DOES have an effect on the females' lifespans - yes, a female rat can live two or three years if she's not being bred from. A feeder breeder's lifespan is expected to be more like 10-18 months maximum, especially if she is littering back to back. It depends on what you need, though, as I said. If you don't need twenty or thirty rats of reasonable size every week, or your animals are happy to swap between fresh or frozen, then keeping, say, ten cages of girls, two cages of boys and two 'growing on' cages if that works for the sizes you need will help extend the lives of your girls.
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