A homemade diet?

2222 Views 10 Replies 5 Participants Last post by SarahY, Dec 18, 2010

shiremice

Discussion Starter · Dec 17, 2010

Ideally I would love to feed my mice a homemade diet, but I'm still not quite sure what a nutritionally correct homemade diet would consist of. I've seen "recipes" for some homemade diets but there aren't any specific amounts or ratios. Thoughts?

Would lab blocks be a better alternative?

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SarahY

· #2 · Dec 17, 2010

I feed mine on 70% mixed poultry grain (contains wheat, barley and maize), 2% dog kibble and 10% wild bird seed, and my mice do fine on that. Just make sure your mix is mostly grains and includes some dog food and seeds for protein. Mice are very easy to feed

Sarah xxx

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moustress

· #3 · Dec 17, 2010

My mousie mix is 40% whole oats, 40% whole wheat (these two by weight, not volume) 5% safflower seeds, 5% millet, 10% assorted high protein collagen building content liek high quality puppy kibble, scrambled egg, soy based infant formula, and assorted other bits of stuff from the kitchen for variety, like dried bread crumbs, bits of cooked rice, yam, potato, chicken, tuna, spinach, breakfast cereal, sometimes dried banana or other non citrus fruit.

I've learned that millet can be fed in higher proprtion; I had thought it was high in fat and not suitabvele as a main component of the diet. I'd like to add barley if I can find a sorce for big bags of it.

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geordiesmice

· #4 · Dec 18, 2010

What make of pellets do you buy for the lab cages here in the uk high protein dog baged dog food was recomended too me?

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moustress

· #5 · Dec 18, 2010

I get Professional Brand Puppy kibble. It's corn free, and also lacks tomato products, another thing that can be toxic to meeces. It's comes in nice small bits just the right size for meeces. I don't know if you have the same brand in the UK. It's not too expensive, about $9 for 3 or four pounds, which last a long time, even back when I still had close to 300 meeces.

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shiremice

Discussion Starter · #6 · Dec 18, 2010

So by high quality puppy kibble, you mean: formulated for puppies specifically, no corn, no tomato...what should the fat and protein content be?

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moustress

· #7 · Dec 18, 2010

http://www.professionalpetfood.com/prod ... y_formula/

Here's a link to the Professional Dogfood site. I believe that the proportion of total protein for breeding and nursing should be around 20%, with a portion of the protein coming from the grain and seeds I use. I feed only one chunk per mousie per day when breeding or nursing. while I haven't done a nunbers crunch and how that plays out for total percentage of protein in the diet, I feel the balance I have is healthy as observed in the health of the litters I've produced. the nonbreeding meeces get a chunk of kibble every other say. Too much protein is unhealthy for a mousie. and I switch off to other sources of high quality protein and collagen building ingredients. For instance, one night every mousie gets a chunk of kibble, and teh breeders also get a bit of scrambled egg, or a 1/2 tsp of nondairy infant formula. The next night the nonbreeders get only the grains and seeds, the breedres get one serving of higher protein stuff.

BTW, meeces will lose inhibition and flock to The Hand like ants at a picnic if you present them with a chunk of dried bread. It think it's in the mousie genes....they live for carbohydrates, and I think bread is a prime mover for meeces evolving to live with humans to start out with. Grains are attractive; bread commands the mousie appetite. They shloudn't have a lot of it, but it sure does a good job of cracking the ice and getting them to interact with you.

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geordiesmice

· #8 · Dec 18, 2010

I totally agree with you about bread.

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SarahC

· #9 · Dec 18, 2010

geordiesmice said:
What make of pellets do you buy for the lab cages here in the uk high protein dog baged dog food was recomended too me?

I think catwoman said she used Harlan lab blocks which you can get over here.I used to deliver to Harlan until recently.I feed mine cat complete biscuits which they prefer to the dog complete biscuits I have tried.If you do go for dog stuff then it's worth remembering that in the U.K working dog food such as greyhound kibble is vat free which makes a difference to cost especially as vat is going up :evil:

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