Pet Forum / Mammals / Rats / April 2007

Dieting small animals is always a big problem for me. I've found that if
one rat in a group is overweight, decreasing the amount of rat food
available just seems to result in the others getting skinnier. Cutting
out any fattening treats seems to be the only other thing possible if you
rule out separating the fat one from the others (which obviously isn't
such a great thing to do). Would it be possible to make their regular rat
food harder to get hold of? Also, although it might be too time-consuming
maybe you could feed them their normal rat food separately a couple or a
few times a day.

Rosemary

When I first started keeping rats, I fed them lots of junk and a grain
mix as well as dog food. My rats were lazy, fat and sick. I talked to my
vet and she pointed out that dog food is not energy dense enough for
rats and the grain mix was simply not balanced. So I switched them to a
rat block and no more junk food. Any treat they get has to be low fat,
low protein, no salt and no sugar. This has worked great...they've lost
weight, are much much more active and are quite healthy, in fact, I've
got rats that are 37, 36 and 35 months old. I've got rats that are
running around at 24 months like they were young studs. While everyone
talks about their males being lazy and squishy, mine are running around
playing all the time. You can see this in all my videos on YouTube. (jorats)
Cutting out all junk is important as a start.
There's been lots of studies out there that prove that cutting calorie
consumption actually prolongs life. This is true in rats as in humans.
Some go as far as feeding their rats every second day. Now I wouldn't be
able to go that far with those sweet begging eyes looking at me each
day. But my rats now get a limited amount of blocks (3 each) with lots
of veggies and some fruit.
The exercise is also very important... which you already do so that's good.
I also want to say, don't put an old or sick rat on a diet. This could
be detrimental to them.
My vet once told me, if we can keep our rats very slim until 18 months,
then at 18 months start giving them a little extra (fat like olive oil,
avocados...) so they have extra when when they do start to get ill and
lose weight.

I once had a rat that got too fat and I had to put on a diet.  His cagemate
was really slim, so I didn't want to alter their main dried rat food as I
didn't want her to lose any weight.  The problem lay in some of the fresh
foods I was giving him anyway and the fact that he was pretty lazy!  I
didn't feed unhealthy foods but things such as baked beans, mashed potato, a
bit of our pasta dinner (with sauce!), some dairy products and avocado pear.
What I didn't realise at the time is that baked beans have hidden sugars (in
the tomato sauce they are in) so are not *that* low in calories, and
potatoes and avocadoes aren't the lowest of calories, in fact avocado is one
of the highest caloried veg/fruit, and the sauces I used to use back then
for our pasta dinners were quite calorific.  Most dairy products certainly
aren't low fat either.  (Compared to other fruit bananas are quite calorific
too.)  What I started doing was removing those foods and feeding him just
the lower calorie ones (they had always had these along with the higher
ones) such as broccoli, cabbage, swede, peas, cauliflower, spinach, carrots,
berries...  I would slip my slim rattie her higher calorie healthy foods
when fattus rattus was off free ranging somewhere!  Regards excercise I used
to encourage him to climb to the top of my clothes airer, an activity I've
found rats seem to love!  I saw an improvement in his weight after just a
few weeks.  After he lost the weight I then allowed the occasional high
calorie treat such as nuts, seeds, avocado and his beloved mashed potatoes,
just made sure I didn't give them too often!

Tracey