Rats can be picky eaters who will opt for a fatty meal when they can get it, so developing a healthy and well-balanced diet is necessary to avoid your rat becoming malnourished or obese. To find the best foods for your pet rat, we evaluated the major rat food brands, ranging from hearty pellet diets to leaner seed mixes. Most of our favorite options are uniform pellets, which professionals generally consider the best option for rat diets.
“Feeding a pelleted diet keeps the rats from being able to pick and choose what they want to eat, which could keep them from getting all the nutrients needed to stay their healthiest,” Amanda Auxier, co-owner of the North Carolina rodentry Rocky Point Rattery, told The Spruce Pets.
The best rat pellet for most pet rats is Oxbow Essentials Adult Rat Food, a nutritious and fortifying kibble that cuts out unhealthy ingredients while satisfying a rat’s omnivorous palate.
Oxbow Essentials Adult Rat Food is a well-balanced dry food option that suits the needs of most pet rats. Like all of the Omaha-based company’s products, this diet is nutritious and hearty while also being lean on fat. Consisting of both animal and plant elements, the mix provides the range of ingredients that rats are predisposed to favor.
Unlike some of our other recommendations, Oxbow Essentials is formulated for adults, which means it has less fat to discourage obesity and a better balance of nutrients suitable for a full-grown pet rat. Its primary ingredient is brown rice, which is a healthy but energizing grain option, with soybeans also featured as a protein source. Other ingredients include oats, wheat, soy, and fish meal. The combination provides robust fiber and protein.
One major advantage of Oxbow Essentials Adult Rat Food is that its nutritional balance precludes the need for portion control. An adult rat with a healthy weight can be given unrestricted access to Oxbow food, particularly in combination with grass hay. The kibble is fully uniform to prevent rats from picking and choosing ingredients, thus guaranteeing a balanced meal at every meal time. A major perk with Oxbow’s product is its heavy prebiotic and antioxidant content, which will help fortify your rat’s immune system.
Oxbow Essentials Adult Rat Food is available in 3-pound and 20-pound quantities.
Key Ingredients: Whole brown rice, oat groats, wheat bran, wheat, soybean meal, menhaden fish meal, calcium carbonate | Size: 3, 20 pounds | Recommended Daily Serving: Unlimited
Imported from the U.K., this rat food has premium, vegetarian ingredients. Science Selective incorporates dried fruit—apples and blackcurrants—for vitamins and antioxidants. It’s also formulated for circulatory health, with a high ratio of polyunsaturated fatty acids (that’s the good kind) vs. saturated fat and cholesterol.
Both Science Selective and Oxbow’s rat foods offer a complete diet, with very similar nutritional profiles, though Oxbow’s pellets have slightly more protein and fat. Oxbow has brown rice as its primary ingredient, while Science Selective uses wheat as its base.
Despite its higher price, Science Selective may be worth considering over our favorite if you’re concerned about ingredients derived from animals (Oxbow’s rat food includes fish meal), or if your rats have been rejecting other foods.
Key Ingredients: Wheat, soybean meal, barley, oats, soya oil, dried apples, dried blackcurrants, wheat feed, limestone flour, vitamin A, vitamin D3 | Size: 4.4 pounds | Recommended Daily Serving: 20 to 25 grams
Kaytee Forti-Diet Pro Health rat food costs about half as much per pound as our favorite from Oxbow. It has more protein, fiber, and moisture, too. Plus, it contains probiotics to aid in digestion. However, this nutritional density means being a little more precise about portions.
The tradeoff is some lower-quality ingredients, like sugary molasses. The pellets can also get a little crumbly and tend to break up in the bag. Kaytee Forti-Diet Pro Health rat food is available in 3- and 25-pound bags.
Key Ingredients: Dehulled soybean meal, ground corn, ground wheat, ground oats, sun-cured alfalfa meal, ground peanuts, ground flaxseed, dried cane molasses, dried bacillus licheniformis fermentation product, dried bacillus subtilis fermentation product | Size: 3, 25 pounds | Recommended Daily Serving: 1 tablespoon
Non-uniform seed, nut, and grain diets are not our default first choice for pet rats, due to the fact that some rats will pick through the mixes selectively and receive unbalanced nutrition. Additionally, they do not always provide a full meal’s worth of protein, especially for larger rats.
However, Vitakraft’s Rat and Mouse Food brand strikes the best balance of any forage mix we evaluated. The product uses a nutrient-rich grain-based ingredient list to boost the protein level per serving and offers a comprehensive spread of essential vitamins and minerals.
Vitakraft’s mix—called Premium Fortified Blend—includes a spread of fruit and vegetable ingredients to promote a healthier immune system. The vitamins and minerals in the grains are also intended to foster skin and coat health and improve digestion.
If you’re concerned with choosing an entirely natural option for your rat, the Vitakraft mix has no artificial ingredients whatsoever. This excellent mealtime option can bring out your pet rat’s innate foraging tendencies while still guaranteeing a balanced diet and providing growing rats with the energy they need.
Key Ingredients: Wheat, oat groats, puffed wheat, dehydrated alfalfa meal, flaked corn, flaked peas | Size: 2 pounds | Recommended Daily Serving: 3 to 4 tablespoons
This pocketbook-friendly diet from Kaytee is one of the most popular seed mix diets for rats. Consisting of all-natural seeds, grains, and pellets, it is higher in protein than most other mix options and fortified with extra minerals and vitamins (vitamins A, B12, E, and D3).
Since Kaytee’s Supreme Mouse & Rat Food is a seed mix rather than a uniform pellet, rat owners need to be a little more attuned to portion control. Rats often pick their favorites out of food mixes that combine multiple seeds, throwing off their balanced diet.
The Kaytee mix is uniform enough that many rats will not sift through selectively and eat the proper balance of foods, but it is nevertheless worth keeping a close eye on your rat's feeding behavior when introducing a seed mix. Many rat owners find that mixed-ingredient foods are better reserved for snacks and treats rather than as dietary staples.
With its low price tag, all-natural content, and wide nutritional coverage, this is a great pick if you're looking for a seed mix.
Key Ingredients: Rolled corn, rolled oat groats, rolled barley, de-hulled soybean meal, sunflower, peanuts | Size: 4, 20 pounds | Recommended Daily Serving: 3 to 4 tablespoons
Rat Personality, Intelligence, and Care
Mazuri’s popular pellet diet is vegetable-based and is one of the more protein-rich options for rat diets. However, it’s also a little higher in fat, so you’ll need to control portions if your rat is at risk of obesity.
But the real appeal of this Mazuri product over other rat food options is its immense pellet size—it’s a full inch long (dimensions: 3/8 x 5/8 x 1 inch). This alternative to the kibble shape found in our other favorites can be better for your rat's teeth since they have to gnaw the block down. However, the blocks get dustier than smaller pellets and are likely to shed more crumbs. Still, both pellets and blocks can be an excellent diet for your rat.
Key Ingredients: De-hulled soybean meal, ground corn, ground wheat, soybean oil, cane molasses, ground oats, dried beet pulp | Size: 2, 25 pounds | Recommended Daily Serving: 16 to 25 grams
Oxbow’s primary rat food options are geared toward more mature rats, but the brand also has a complementary pellet diet designed for rats under 6 months old. “Higher protein [diets] are a good idea for younger rats, especially when they are still growing,” Auxier told The Spruce Pets.
The kibble is protein-rich (18 percent) and has stabilized calcium designed to support muscle and bone development. It is also rich in vitamins that build up young rats' immune systems and promote overall good health.
Baby rat owners can feed their little ones as much of this uniform kibble as they need to feel nourished on a given day. The price tag is reasonable, and like Oxbow’s dry food options for older rats, it is a consumer and veterinarian favorite.
Key Ingredients: Ground corn, soybean meal, wheat middlings, soybean hulls, dried whey, cane molasses, soybean oil, sunflower meal, alfalfa meal, limestone, flaxseed | Size: 2.5, 25 pounds | Recommended Daily Serving: Unlimited
To conscientious pet owners who want healthy and robust diets with maximum nutritional value, a block diet may be an appealing option. Created with lab rats in mind, these premium, exhaustively researched, and customized diets contain all the desired minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and more that your rat needs—and in many cases, they can be found in versions tailor-made to your rat’s size and specific needs.
Envigo—formerly known as Teklad—is our pick for an excellent block brand. There are three major diet options designed by the company; we recommend whichever one fits the profile of your rat.
The 8604 diet is perfect for rats who can benefit from a hefty protein dosage in their daily meals. At 24 percent, it is good for stimulating reproduction and growth in young rats. For slightly older rats—or pregnant rats—Envigo recommends the 2018 diet (with 18 percent protein). The 2014 diet is a “maintenance formula” for adult rats, most recommended for rats suffering from weight issues or aging rats (14 percent protein).
All of the Envigo diets are kibble consisting of top-of-the-line ingredients designed not only to benefit rats’ nutritional profile—and reduce ingredients that have the potential to be overly fatty or have adverse effects—but to promote health across the board. The low-fat Envigo meals have been demonstrated to have a variety of positive effects on rat health.
Key Ingredients: Soybean meal, corn flakes, wheat middlings, ground corn, fish meal, dried molasses, dried whey, soybean oil, dried brewers yeast, vitamins, minerals | Size: 5 pounds | Recommended Daily Serving: Not listed
This festive blend from Kaytee is designed to engage your pet and stimulate rats' natural foraging instincts by providing a wide variety of grains, seeds, fruits, and vegetables. The colorful blend offers diverse textures and shapes for rats to sink their teeth into, which helps to break down plaque and promote dental health as they chew. It also contains prebiotics and probiotics for digestion and immune support, along with antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids.
Kaytee Fiesta Mouse & Rat Food is a top-rated choice on Amazon, garnering over 5,350 five-star ratings, with pet parents reporting that their rats love the blend's variety. However, the blend does contain a seemingly disproportionate amount of sunflower seeds, which are high in fat.
Key Ingredients: Corn, ground corn, wheat, sunflower seed, dehulled soybean meal, rolled oats, oat groats, shelled peanuts, sun-cured alfalfa meal, rolled barley, milo, millet, ground wheat, whole peanuts, ground oats, dried bananas, dehydrated carrots, raisins, dried papaya, green split peas, pumpkin seeds, yellow peas, wheat middlings, dicalcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, ground rice, dried pineapple, white northern beans, ground flax seed | Size: 2, 4.5 pounds | Recommended Daily Serving: 3 to 4 tablespoons
Final Verdict If your rat is a healthy adult (over the age of 6 months) and doesn’t require a carefully customized diet, it is hard to argue with Oxbow Essentials Adult Rat Food as the go-to choice for your pet’s principal food source. This rat food has an appealingly diverse ingredients list and uniform kibble presentation. For an alternative to a small pellet diet, check out Mazuri Vegetarian Rat and Mouse Diet, which uses much larger pellets—or “blocks”—so that your rat has to gnaw more, aiding in the maintenance of their rodent teeth.
Final Verdict
If your rat is a healthy adult (over the age of 6 months) and doesn’t require a carefully customized diet, it is hard to argue with Oxbow Essentials Adult Rat Food as the go-to choice for your pet’s principal food source. This rat food has an appealingly diverse ingredients list and uniform kibble presentation. For an alternative to a small pellet diet, check out Mazuri Vegetarian Rat and Mouse Diet, which uses much larger pellets—or “blocks”—so that your rat has to gnaw more, aiding in the maintenance of their rodent teeth.
What to Look For in Foods for Pet Rats
Ingredients
Rats are omnivores, and a balanced diet for your rat generally requires a blend of plant- and animal-based food sources. Rats tend to favor protein-heavy food sources, so to avoid obesity or other health issues, it’s important to be cognizant of the sources of protein in your rat's diet of choice.
“Poor diets are usually high in fat, making rats more likely to gain weight,” Auxier told The Spruce Pets. “This is especially true for male rats, who tend to be a lot less active than female rats. High protein levels in some diets have been reported to cause plaque buildup on the skin of rats that have the Harley gene.”
Complex carbohydrates are ideal because they are high in protein but low in fat. Since rats are prone to obesity, especially in the first year of their life, it is crucial to monitor their fat consumption. Sugars should generally be avoided, so if the rat food option you’re eyeing includes added sugar sources on the ingredient list, steer clear of it as a primary diet.
Specialized Diets
Like most animals, rats have distinct dietary requirements at different stages of their lives. Rats’ other health idiosyncrasies, including obesity, may determine which diet option works best for them. While food sources like our favorite on the list—Oxbow Essentials Adult Rat Food—are excellent default options at the pet food store, you may want to switch to a fully vegetarian food, a seed mix, or even consider carefully customized diets like those given to lab rats.
Snacks and Treats
There are plenty of all-natural human snacks you can give to your rat. Lots of online resources can be helpful when determining whether a specific morsel of human food is acceptable for your rat to nibble on, but veggies, fruits, and some types of nuts are particularly beneficial. (Beware sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and mangoes, however!) It is important to make sure that the snacks and treats you give your rat complement their proper meals to avoid overloading them with protein or fat, especially.
Auxier notes that snacks are not always essential for a rat’s diet, but can be highly beneficial in other, more subjective ways. “I do think [snacks] are a good ide