This article is from the Spring 2001 AFRMA Rat & Mouse Tales news-magazine.

By Louise Stack

Lately, I’ve been on a quest to find a rodent chew treat that would be tough enough to meet my rodents’ chewing needs and be healthy too, so I checked out the Nylabone® display at my local pet store.

What originally caught my eye and drew me to the Fruit Bone™ section of the Nylabone® display rack was the colorful fruit painted on each package, and since it’s billed as an all-natural gourmet health chew, how could I resist.

I was pleased to learn that Fruit Bones™ are made from edible potato starch and natural fruit flavors and contain no sugar, salt, plastic, artificial color, or preservatives. Plus, they’re completely digestible.

The bones come in four sizes; Petite, Regular, Large, and Giant. At first I thought the Petite size was cute and just the right size for rats, but because they are somewhat expensive I recommend buying a larger size bone and sawing it into smaller pieces with a hacksaw blade, thus making it more economical and enabling each rat to have its own piece. Also, since the bones are quite hard, they last a reasonable amount of time. I’d say it takes at least a couple of weeks for my three female rats Penny, Pezzy, and Bijou to whittle away a Petite size bone into nothing.

Nylabone® even offers a money back guarantee for skeptical shoppers.

My rats go wild over all the Fruit Bone™ flavors—Banana, Peach, Strawberry, Orange, Grape, and Watermelon. They don’t seem to care which flavor bone they get just so they get one. Even though on the package it says, “Intended for use by dogs,” from the way my rats always grab their piece of Fruit Bone™ and scurry off to munch, I believe they feel that Fruit Bone™ is intended for them!

A Chinchilla Blaze Berkshire rat “Wiggles” owned by Julie Klaz with a carrot flavored Nylabone®.

NOTE: Nylabone® Products, P.O. Box 427, Neptune, NJ 07754-0427. The web site for Nylabone® is www.nylabone.com. [Unfortunately they no longer make Fruit Bones™ or vegetable flavors in the Healthy Edibles®.]