This was sent to me by Rebecca, the owner of my sister rattery, Rebecca's Sweet and Loving Rats in Lebanon, IN. http://www.sweetandlovingrats.com/
My rats years ago I used to keep in various sized tanks. I used shredded newspaper bedding because it was cheap.
I used to feed them a diet of various cereals, oats, fruits and veggies, different dog foods and cat foods, chicken, liver, alfalfa blocks and just basic table scraps, not to mention the ratty favorite, popcorn. THey were on a soy free diet because soy was not that popular back then.
I never had to deal with respiratory issues with any of my rats. I did have 2 male rats that got cancer because of their preferance to eating only dried corn. They got the tumors around 2 years of age, but lived at least 2 years after they first got the tumors. I remember that I did have one male that I gave an orange to and the results were not very pretty. I ended up having to have him neutered and he lived to be at least 4 years old. I did take them to a vet, who at that time was willing to treat rats and even had one of my boys fixed due to the orange thing.
I never lost any of my rats younger than 4 years old. I even had some of my rats that lived to be as old at 6 years old.
I know now that I plan to keep as much soy out of their diet as possible. I now read labels on anything that I feed them and try to feed as much natural food as possible. Some of the things I would never had fed them would have been the massive amounts of corn, oranges or popcorn now. The things I know now are so different from the total lack of information I had all of those years ago that I would not care for my present rats the way I did my old ones.
From my experience with the rats I had then and the rats I have now is that my rats then lived so much longer and happier lives than most rats that are fed soy and soy based foods now.
~Rebecca B.
Rebecca's Swwet and Loving Rats
posted by Tami with Social Rats
