Garden Select Mouse and Young Rat Food, Garden-Inspired Recipe for Young Rats and Mice of All Ages, Vitamin & Mineral Rich Pet Food Pellets, Non-GMO, Made in USA, 2 Pound Bag

As a new rat owner, I wanted to find the best possible food to help my babies thrive. I found it recommended by a rat care website. My rats, now almost three months old, love it. I plan to continue using it until they transition to adult food. I supplement this with fresh fruits and veggies. As my rats get plenty of free roam and playtime, I see no sign of them getting fat - they're active and full of energy. Overall, I’m very pleased with this product. The quality and nutritional value make me happy, and it gives me peace of mind my babies are eating something well-suited to their needs. I highly recommend it to anyone with young rats looking for a reliable, healthy food option.

Good price, and my mooshkas (3 adorable little mousies) really like it. Oxbow food products were recommended to us when we adoped our first two mice from the animal shelter. Our mice are happy, healthy, active, normal weight, with full and glossy fur, pink noses feet and tails, short teeth, and solid poops with this food. We occasionally supplement with treats of fresh veggies, nuts, seeds and dry crackers for hand training purposes, but this food is their dietary staple.

Rats love this stuff!

Mice love it

Pellet form for good balance on diet. Smell is light. It comes in a bag but I transfer to a tub to keep freshness. Nice amount for your buck.

My rescue mouse hates them, they are very hard. His favorite food is baby puffs and he always runs to me when I’m about to give him some. When I throw these pellets in his bowl he wouldn’t even come out or ever touch them. But my Guinea pig loves to have a couple as a treat.

My rats ate it so I guess they thought it tasted good. But it also helps give them something hard to chew on while giving them all the other nutrients they need. Besides all the fresh treats I give them this is my go to everyday food item

Rats are omnivores. In the wild, their preferred foods are fruits, nuts, seeds and grains, tender greens, and the occasional insect. Rats, unlike guinea pigs or rabbits, do not really consider grass to be food. Perhaps that's why none of the pet rats I've known have been very enthusiastic about Oxbow Garden Select. Two of its top six ingredients are grass (oat grass and orchard grass). It may be "healthy" from an over-analyzed scientific viewpoint, but from a rat's viewpoint, it is "meh." There are a few good things I have to say about this product: - The price is reasonable, and Oxbow is a trusted brand overall. (However, my rats far preferred Oxbow Essentials, the little brown triangles.) - If you are aiming to feed your rats a vegan diet, this is vegan. (Oxbow Essentials contains fish ingredients.) - If your rats have trouble with excess weight, this homogenous pellet food will encourage them not to overeat, because it's all the same and it all tastes pretty bad! On that note, I actually tasted a piece of Oxbow Garden Select the other day, and it tasted horrible. It was chalky, gritty, salty, and bitter. I almost spat it out and had to force myself to chew it. Knowing how much rats appreciate human food, I assume these pellets don't taste wonderful to them. Taking a closer look at the package, I'm surprised by how many mineral salts are high on the ingredient list: monocalcium phosphate; sodium chloride; calcium carbonate; magnesium oxide; and many more. Considering that rats have more difficulty processing salts than humans do, I have to wonder if it is really a good idea to feed such a salt-heavy food as their main diet. Also high on the ingredient list is sodium bentonite, literally a type of clay. No wonder the pellets taste like chalky dirt. Although I know it's there for a reason (to absorb moisture and prevent mold), the overall effect is "Ugh." Another ingredient is lignin sulfonate, a byproduct from the wood industry that serves as a binding agent. So, essentially, sawdust. Dirt and sawdust. This is why I can never understand why the powers-that-be say to feed your pet rat a diet of almost entirely pellets, supplemented with just a little fresh food here and there. How could salt, dirt, and sawdust possibly be healthier for rats than a balanced whole-food diet like they evolved with? Anyway, getting off my soapbox, I'll just say that my rats voted against this food. Unless I need to put a rat on a diet in the future, my pellet choice will continue to be Oxbow Essentials, which has no grass, less salt, fewer binders and fillers, and a much more positive rating from the four-pawed customers. [Image: Ingredient list screenshot from Chewy.com.]