Mice or rats?

[Matt.B]

I was wondering what people think is more nutrisios(sp lol) jumbo mice or small to med rats? I was wondering for when my little girl is bigger.
Matt

[CamHanna]

I like rats because they seem to have more meat on them at any size. The even the jumbo mice have a lot of bone compared to the amount of good stuff. Young rats are just so chunky, how could they not be better? On top of that, if your snake gets bigger then you will be able to feed bigger rats which are gram for gram way cheaper than mice.

Just my thoughts
Cam

[LdyDrgn]

RodentPro has a Nutritional chart (http://www.rodentpro.com/qpage_articles_03.asp).

[gonesnakee]

Gram for gram Rats are not cheaper than mice. He lives in Alberta, we are "Rat Free" here. It is illegal to have any live Rats in the province, therefore it is alot more expensive for us in AB to obtain them & shipping is a factor. Any other province your "cheaper than statement" may apply, but not nessicarily here. Another thing is that the young rats are much higher in fat content than say an adult mouse. This can be good or bad depending on your intentions. Fatty food is good for breeder females maybe but not adult males IMHO Mark

[LdyDrgn]

Adult mouse at 10g has 55.8% crude protein and 23.6% crude fat. A rat of the same weight (10g) has 57.9% c. p. and 23.7% c. f. A juvenile rat that weighs between 10-50g has 56.1% c. p. and 27.5% c. f. The fat percentage is only .1% to 3.9% different, which isn't a whole lot, and the protein is still higher in the rat than the mouse.

So live rats are a problem... what about frozen? Are those hard to obtain in Alberta, too?

[gonesnakee]

As stated all Rats have to be imported so shipping is always a cost factor. Live Rats can mean a $10,000 fine + People always have & feed Rats but because they can't be produced here they always cost more than say BC or Sask etc. as they have to be brought in from out of province. Unless you have snakes that require the Rats, why bother going there. I'll take your word on the nutrition info as I'm no expert, but mice live or frozen are easily obtained & Rats are not, so if not required for Pythons etc. why not just feed mice. Its a Cornsnake afterall LOL Mark

[LdyDrgn]

That's odd that they would restrict rats and not mice... and that you can't even get them frozen. By then it's just meat, LOL.
Thanks for the info as I did not know about that restriction.

[5alive]

Yes you can get them frozen i dont know how old this post is but what Mark was saying is that you can buy live ones here or raise them so they have to be imported wich unless the rat is paying for the gas cost you money. So yes you can get them here in Alberta but they have to be frozen and they cost more money then they would in other provinces. Alberta saves 1.3 billion a year for rat damage to property and all that stuff because we are rat free.

[Tigergenesis]

Not much nutritional difference between mice and rats of the same size.