Rats. Health benefits?

is there benefits to feeding rats (be it pinkies, pups or whatever size is suitable) to snakes healthwise? I"ve heard so many people say to feed snakes rats because they're better than mice but never heard why they're better. I'm mostly just curious so any opinions or evidence would be cool.

You can compare them here (and many others);

http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/zoo/Who...nal02May29.pdf

They look pretty much the same to me but rats may have a slight edge, depending on size.

Briefly.

Juvenile Mouse 10g 44% Protein 30% Fat
Neonatal Rat 10G 57% protein 23% Fat

Adult Mouse >10G 56% Protein 24% Fat
Juvenile Rat 10-50G 56% Protein 27% Fat

I would think the most important thing is to feed the appropriate size food and switch to rats as soon as possible so you don't have an animal stuck on mice. It is much preferred to feed one right size rat to a large boa or python than feed it four or five mice at a time.

I also had heard rats were "more nutritious" but didn't look further into it. The protein versus fat comparison says a lot, thanks for posting it and the link, Don.

for me it's more of a convenience thing . i raise my own rats so it's cheaper and easier for me if my critters are on rats . as long as your snakes are eating something , then it's all good .

i've looked at the various charts that break down nutritional values on different feeders and it's all very interesting , but , has anyone ever really done a proper study to find out what the actual "proper" nutrition is for a particular spiecies of snakes ? if not then it's a case of your guess is as good as mine .

At one point, I remember someone had started breeding a certain kind or strain of mice, that ate fruit as a major part of their diet, and they were trying to market these mice as being more natural of a diet (for ball pythons in particular), but I haven't heard anything more about it.

I think the "proper" diet for most snakes would be very tough to nail down - since snakes are opportunistic - some will eat carrion, most eat a mix of rodents and birds. I would think the only way to do this would be to analyze the gut contents of a series of wild snakes of a particular species... but who is to say they wouldn't do better on a different type or rodent? So you're right, even if those studies existed, it still wouldn't be definitive, we'd just know more about the typical diet of a wild specimen, not if that wild died was better or worse than domestic rats and mice..