Treats & Extras

In addition to their dry mix your mice will also benefit from and enjoy some fresh food a couple of times a week, as well as the odd treat. Moderation is the key here though, as you don’t want to undo all your good work of feeding your mice a healthy, balanced diet by letting them fill up on something else! With this in mind it is important to keep the quantities of the treats and extras you give small (or remove a large item once a reasonable amount has been eaten) so that they don’t intefere with the mice eating their dry mix. A useful tip for when you are trying to judge portion sizes is to look at the food in comparison to the size of your mouses head. This may sound daft but if you then imagine the size of your favourite treat in comparison to the size of your head it makes you realise just how small a small amount for a mouse really is!

There are many things you can offer your mice in addition to their staple food. Most types of fruit and vegetables and things such as cooked rice and pasta (it doesn’t have to be cooked but they may well already have it uncooked in their main food) are good things to try, although mice can be fussy little things so it may be trial and error as to see what yours like. Things that have always tended to be popular with my mice are

baby sweetcorn cobs
carrot
garden peas
canned tuna (in spring water, not oil or brine)
pasta shapes
red grapes
brown rice
chicken
rice cakes (no added salt)
toast

Treats can include animal chocolate drops, seeds such as sunflower seeds and millet, nuts (too fatty to be included in the main diet), bonio type dog biscuits and many of the commercially available small animal treats. Some breakfast cereals that aren’t suitable to use in the dry mix also go down well, such as Cheerios. Contrary to popular belief most mice will not eat cheese and as they do not require dairy foods it is unnecessary to offer them.

Food can also be used both in and out of the cage to provide entertainment for your mice. A spray of millet seed pegged to the roof of the cage for example will be used as much for climbing as for eating. A sprinkling of sunflower seeds or similar under an extra deep layer of litter will start a game of tunnel digging and small cardboard boxes will be chewed to pieces in order to get at a treat hidden inside. Edible grasses can easily be grown in a pot on a window sill and make a cheap and nutritious evenings entertainment for a group of mice. I’ve even heard of dry pieces of spaghetti pushed into a ripe tomato being a popular - if very messy - food game so as you can see the only limit really is your imagination!


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