I've heard of people using rabbit pellets for bedding, but I've never thought of using rabbit diet pellets to feed mice. I suppose the high chlorophyll content in the pellets would make the mice a little less smelly. I've noticed that simply adding a healthy handful of timothy hay every cage cleaning for nesting and nibbling has really cut the odor quite a bit. And I did use a chlorophyll health additive liquid to the water of my mice, which helped as well. Only problem was that it stained the bottles.
Most mouse "mixes" with seeds you buy from pet stores are bad for the sheer fact that they contain more fat than anything else. And when you have a bunch of mice sitting around grazing all day and not getting the exercise a wild mouse would, it adds up pretty quickly. It'd be like us sitting around eating Snickers. I always loved how they say "fortified nutrition". All they do is spray on vitamins and minerals, which if you think about it, its on the shell...the part animals don't eat. The little 'tidbits' of nutritious shapes they put in there are artificially colored and most rodents ignore them completely. I wouldn't eat oatmeal if I had a snickers bar either.
My only issue with rabbit pellets as a staple diet would be the higher fiber, lower protein content and less fat.
Another issue I would have for rabbit pellets is the sheer quantity of Vitamin A they contain. Vitamin A can lead to accumulared toxicity in reptiles, and I don't know if the Vitamin A is synthesized into something else that's harmless while in the mouse before the feeding.
And you also have to consider, most people who have rabbits, don't breed them. So most of the diets don't contain enough necessary nutrients to keep a lactating mother fully supplied, like fat. Tame rabbits get obese rather easily from just the way they're housed generally. So the fat content they need is considerably less than that of a smaller rodent who's spitting out youngins every month.
I've always fed Mazuri Rabbit diet to my pet rabbits in the past which has:
14% protein
1.5% fat
20% - 24% fiber
.80% -1.3% Calcium
.5% Phosphorus
.75% -1.25% Salt
Vit. A - 8,000 IU/lb
Vit. E - 20 IU/lb
The diet I feed to my mice/rats is a mixture of two lab blocks: Mazuri Rodent Pellet (5EO9) and an ADM rodent diet formulated for a local rodent breeder. I cannot for the life of me find the Mazuri rodent diets in larger than 2lb bags. :angry01:
Information on the Mazuri Rodent Pellet:
23% protein
6.3% fat
4% fiber
.95% Calcium
.65% Phosphorus
.28% Salt
Vit. A - 15 IU/gm
Vit. E - 67 IU/gm
Information on my ADM Alliance Rodent Block:
16% protein
6% fat
5% fiber
1.5% Calcium
.8% Phosphorus
.8% Salt
Vit. A - 3500 IU/lb
I also suppliment their staple diet with Nutro Natural Choice dog food, Small World Rodent Suppliment, rolled oats, wheat germ, slightly crunched Wheaties cereal, and yogurt drops. Each mouse colony gets a tablespoonfull and every rat colony gets an 1/8 cup every cage cleaning.
Vitamin K is essential to every creature for circulatory health. Most animals make a sufficient supply of it thanks to beneficial bacteria in the gut, including ourselves. Vitamin K is fat soluable, so if you're not getting the right fats you need, you can't absorb the Vitamin K that's produced naturally or supplimented.
Rabbit diets are formulated for just that, rabbits. Rat/mouse diets are formulated for them. Each animal has a specific set of requirements that they need. I don't feed my dogs and cats people food and I don't eat dog/cat food. Maybe rabbit pellets in the UK are different than here in the US. I dunno. I might suppliment my rodent diets with a few rabbit pellets, but don't think I'd do it as a sole staple. I guess it if it works, use it. You can't deny results.
:-offtopic
I just can't resist...I didn't know 8 year olds were on a quest for more information about peptidoglycans. That'd be how old you were if you have been looking for 15 years.
