This is my first time participating in Frugal Fridays!!! I love Crystal's blog on Biblical Womanhood. I don't go a day without reading it! My Frugal Friday tips this week are for those with small animals as pets. I've had pet rats for almost four years now. Through that time, I've learned a lot of ways to spend less on them, but still give them a high quality of life.
The first idea I have is to make your own food mix. Buying from bulk food bins is a great idea. I've been making my own rat food for a while. It includes low protein dog food, multi colored pastas, granola, multi grain cereal, cranberries, dried bananas, and whatever other healthy things I can get for a good price.
Right now I have two rats- Donovan and Zebedee. I shop for their base diet every other month. I spend between $10 and $15 each time. When I first became a rat owner, I also had two rats- Nosi and Notti. I bought pre packaged rat food from the pet store for them. I shopped for the food at least two times a month and spent anywhere between $7 and $12 each time. My homemade diet gives me WAY MORE bang for my buck. Plus, it is very much more healthy for the rats, and they love it!
Suebee's Rat Diet is a well known diet in the rat community:
http://www.ratsrule.com/diet.html It can be modified to fit any ingredients you want to add or take away. For other small animal diets, I recommend doing some research on what you need to include. (Keep in mind, this is a base diet. A complete diet always includes a vast variety of fresh foods. Which, I might mention, is also pretty inexpensive when you feed your pets bits and pieces of the fresh foods you are eating. ;) )
My second idea is to make use of bedding/litter material that would otherwise be thrown out. My rats are kept on Critter Care natural pet bedding. This would be considered the "off brand" of Care Fresh (although I find Critter Care to be less dusty ;) ) When the price of this bedding went up, I found myself spending quite a bit more on it than I was used to. It only went up a dollar, but my stinky boys go through LOTS of bedding. My family started saving toilet paper and paper towel rolls, paper dixie cups, and cardboard of any kind (tissue boxes, pop tart boxes...) I just rip it up and use it along with the Critter Care. I NEVER would have guessed how much money this saves me. I can now use a bag that would usually last me 2 weeks anywhere from a month to a month and a half. That's a huge money saver!
Frugal Friday readers, please share any other frugal pet ideas you might have. Thanks and have a great weekend!
