What am I doing wrong?

I have converted my rats over to lab block, I am still trying to convert the mice. My problem is they waste a lot of the block, carrying it to their pottie box, or hording it. I have bowls in two rat colonies waited down with stones so they can't tip it over, so they just carry it away. In one colony she buries the food and the bowl. Also if feeding the block how much should and adult rat eat in a day? Maybe I'm giving them too much food. :shrugs:susang

susang said:

My problem is they waste a lot of the block, carrying it to their pottie box, or hording it.

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Well ... it *is* very boring to eat. They have to find something better to do with it :rofl:

Mice and rats are omnivorous scavengers, and they LIVE for variety in their diet - eating is one of their major pleasures. So making their base diet a boring beige block is never going to go down well. If you give them less blocks they will waste less (if they have enough to horde, they've got too much), but if you give them a mixed food with lots of variety, they'll be happier and probably actually eat more overall.

Ideally they should have as much food as they'll eat in 22 hours, so they have a short lean period each day. Start with a little, then gradually give them more until they're eating it all in almost 24 hours ...

I've seen people use a wire screen with mesh size smaller than the lab blocks and put the lab block food on top, that way they have to get it through the screen to eat it. (And it gives them something to do) Maybe you could rig up some kind of food dispenser on the same principle.

I thought about that a food cage. They were eating gourmet rodent, but really wasted that and the mice refuse to eat the alfalfa pellets in it. So now they are on COB (dry corn, oats and barley) plus the block and some treat cheerios, wheat thins, apple. I will try to spice it up for them. thanks for the help, susang

:idea: Would the lab blocks fit inside one of those cages they make to put the suet cakes in for feeding wild birds? You could put a few other treats in there and hang it in the cage, like a rat pinata lol

I'm kind of worried about what I feed, they loved the M&M's, carrots when we had them in the garden. What about greens like broccoli or chard? Someone said scrambled eggs. I've read not dried beans, which of course was in the rodent gourmet. susang

I cut a hole in their tubs and use an external gravity feeder like one uses for a rabbit. I am using the Mazuri 6F breeder diet designed for rat breeding and I only see any kind of waste with the hamsters. I cut back on their food so they actually will go to their stored feed piles and eat from the reserves. A 50# at my local feedmill is about 20.00 and lasts about 8 weeks.