Rat Feeding Series: Part 2
Ways to feed
Author: Jasmin Gregory
Now that we have covered the two main types of base diets, let's discuss how you can introduce or increase feeding enrichment for your mischief. These are approaches to feeding and ways to feed that you can do regardless of base diet.
As we learned in the Enrichment Series (written by Alison Campbell), the bedrock of enrichment is natural behaviours, this means that facilitating naturalistic enrichment is one of the most important tasks a rat parent should undertake. Below I will be quoting directly from Enrichment for Rats Part 5 - Seeking, Pleasure, and Reward.
“…rats (in common with all mammals) have four top-level emotional systems as described by Panksepp. These are Fear, Rage, Panic, and Seeking.
The first three are survival systems that cause stress responses in the rat’s body. Seeking is different. It is driven by the body’s pleasure and reward system, and a rat who is seeking is motivated by a felt need (hunger, thirst, lust, cold, loneliness) to search their environment for a solution.
Finding the solution brings not only relief of the felt need, but a hit of dopamine, serotonin and/or oxytocin. These hormones bring with them the feel-good emotions we describe as relief, excitement, pleasure, joy, connection, and love.
Pet rats who always have food available in a bowl rarely experience hunger. Adlib feeding is known to reduce health and lifespan as rats age. It also dulls the motivation for seeking food (hunger) and the pleasure responses that come with finding food and relieving hunger.”
Today we will be discussing scatter feeding, foraging toys, ad lib feeding, and intermittent fasting.
Scatter Feeding
Scatter feeding is what it sounds like! Instead of feeding in a bowl alone, you scatter food through the substrate of the cage so your rats have to sniff it out to find the food. This can work exceptionally well for young and active mischiefs. Don’t worry about them not finding little pieces of food, rats have an exceptional sense of smell and can sniff out even very small pieces of food amongst a substrate.
It can be a good idea if you have a mischief of mixed ages and abilities to feed half and half, that is half in a bowl and half scattered/hidden in the cage. This way those who have a harder time mobilising, or who have respiratory/sinus infections that affect sense of smell can still easily eat, while the more motivated of the group can enjoy sniffing out their dinner.
Foraging Toys
Foraging toys can be purchased or home made. Some of our favourite purchasable foraging toys are made by Hotel Rat, their 3D printed toys are designed specifically for rats and provide some extra challenge and interest to food time. There are also some wonderful foraging toys made for birds that are available at pet stores, keep in mind that foraging toys for dogs and cats will likely be too large and difficult for rats to use. You can either feed all daily food in a foraging toy, or just treats.
Foraging toys can also be made inexpensively at home, some ideas include hiding treats (or their regular food) inside scrunched up newspaper or tissue paper, put them in the cage or leave out during free-roam time and watch them rip and chew their way in to get their prize. Grab an empty toilet paper or paper towel roll, fold in one end to close it and in the other end put shredded paper/newspaper and dry treats/food, then close up the open end and it’s ready to go!
Pea fishing is a classic rat favourite, to set up pea fishing find a shallow dish and fill with water, then add frozen peas or other frozen veggies, your rats will have a wonderful time fishing the produce out of the water - this is a particularly good idea if it’s a hot day as it’ll help them stay cool.
For a list of homemade rat toys, including a bunch of food related toys, we recommend the Dapper Rat’s excellent list of ideas and instructions.
Ad Libitium (Ad-lib) feeding
Ad libitum (typically shortened to ad lib) is Latin meaning “freely as one wishes”, in terms of rat feeding it refers to the practice of always having food accessible for your rats. This is the most common way that people feed their rats. There are a few different approaches to ad lib feeding depending on the base diet you are feeding.
Type 1: Base food constantly available (preferably when feeding pellet food).
Type 2: Base food is given in limited amounts once or twice a day along with a daily fresh meal (this is the recommended feeding approach for Shunamite diets)
Type 3: Base food is given in limited amounts once or twice a day, however fresh vegetables, fungi, and limited fruit is constantly available
Unfortunately, ad lib feeding is linked to worse health outcomes, something we will be discussing next.
Intermittent Fasting
You may already be familiar with intermittent fasting, its popularity in human health and wellness circles has been growing in recent years, but did you know that periods of fasting in rats can lead to better long term health outcomes for them?
It feels counter intuitive, especially when so many rat care and behaviour guides, as well as food manufacturers themselves, recommend “ad lib” feeding (meaning unlimited access to food).
Please note: Intermittent fasting must only be done with food. Water should never be withheld from rats, they must always have constant access to clean, fresh water.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5411330/
Diversifying offerings - Using treat mixes, fresh feeding, and novel uses for pellet foods.
Treat Mixes
Treat mixes can be either store bought or homemade, we prefer homemade mixes as you can be careful about what ingredients they
include and adjust them to meet your mischief's needs and preferences. Treat mixes are often made up of tasty foods that either because of their sugar, salt, fat, or calorie content shouldn’t make up a large part of your rats diet. This doesn’t mean that treat mixes are bad or shouldn’t be given, in fact they can be an excellent opportunity to enrich your ratties diet (particularly if your base food is a pellet).
Some ingredients to consider including in your treat mixes are:
Dried or freeze-dried fruit (look for ones that do not have added sugar): Banana, cranberries, raisins/sultanas, mango (chopped small), berries, apple etc.
Seeds: hemp, chia, flax, sunflower, sesame, pepitas/pumpkin, popcorn kernels
Grains, cereals, pseudocereals: pearl barley, rice (any colour), oats, millet, wheat, rye, quinoa, puffed or flaked grains,
Fresh Feeding
Feeding a fresh meal daily, or even just a few times a week is a fantastic way to add additional nutrients, fibre, diversity, and enrichment to your rats diet. We recommend a “rat salad” approach which can be made up in batches and then served over a few days.
Feeding fruit, vegetables, and fungi to rats doesn’t have to be hard, following the formula below will help you get a lovely fresh meal for your rats that they will love digging through to find all the goodies within.
50% leafy veg (10-15% of which can be herbs)
20% colourful veg (try to help your rats “eat the rainbow”)
10% legumes (lentils and peas can be served raw, sprouted, or cooked, but other legumes like chickpeas, black beans, cannellini, bortoli, kidney, etc must be cooked prior to serving due to the antinutrients present in their raw states)
10% others (cooked grains, pasta, couscous, rice, bourgal, pearl barley, millet, kamut etc, as well as seeds and nuts)
10% fruit
If your rats aren’t used to eating fresh meals or fruit and veg it can take them a little while to adjust and get more confident trying new things. Don’t be disheartened if you present them with fresh food and they only nibble at a little or dig through for their favourite bits and leave the rest. Stay consistent and keep offering fresh meals and different kinds of fresh foods, you’ll find their tastes widen as time goes on and they discover new flavours and textures. Anecdotally, we have found that the more diversity you offer in your fresh meals, the more your rats will enjoy trying new foods and eventually they’ll dive right into new foods without so much as a second thought.
Novel uses for pellet foods
Just because you are feeding a pellet diet does not mean you can’t feed it in exciting ways! There are plenty of ways to get creative with how you prepare and serve pellet food, below are a few options.
In the cooler weather it can be nice to mix with warm plant milk (rats are naturally lactose intolerant past infancy) and mashed berries or bananas to make a porridge. In summer make a smoothie using plant milk, and frozen fruit/vegetables, blend in some of their pellet food, this is a great way to help your ratties keep cool and get some new flavours, textures, fibre, and nutrients all in one! Both of these options are also excellent for young ratties who are recently weaned and discovering solids.
Another option is coating the dry food in different spices and supplement powders, some options include tumeric (add a little bit of black pepper to help make the anti-inflammatory properties bio-available), cinnamon, spirulina, nutritional yeast, cocoa powder, red berry powder, etc. Start with a tablespoon or so of the pellet food and slowly add in the powder until it’s coated. To serve you can scatter feed, or you can use an empty egg carton or similar and put a scoop of the different flavoured food in each cup. You’ll notice your rats have preferences and favourites, these preferences can change day-to-day (just like ours do) so having lots of different options can be an exciting way for them to discover new flavours and find new favourites.
You can also make little rat sized biscuits by blending pellet food and using it in place of flour in a pet safe recipe. Recipes for homemade dog biscuits are usually highly suitable for rats, you just need to adjust the portion sizes and cook time.
