At one point, I thought that you’d have to search far and wide for some unusual food if you had wanted to feed a pet prairie dog something special. Fortunately, it seems that they’re okay with a wide variety of fruits and veggies you can just find at a grocery store!
Take the following for instance:
- Oranges
- Guava
- Raspberries
- Honeydew melon
- Strawberries
- Rutabaga
- Cauliflower
- Apples, but only after you take out the seeds
While rutabagas and cauliflower plants aren’t exactly fruit, to prairie dogs they’re almost every bit as sweet as such and they’ll make a great treat! Keep in mind that you’re only going to want around 10-15 percent of your prairie dog’s diet to look like this, because they’re prone to obesity.
Consider cabbage, the green tops of beet plants, spinach leaves and broccoli florets as good treats for your prairie dogs, since these are all quite sweet to them as well. Depending on where you are in the country, you might be able to find kohlrabi at the grocery store.
It’s not as common as it used to be, but prairie dogs go crazy for this turnip and cabbage-like fruity plant.
You might have noticed that all of these examples are cultivated crops, but prairie dogs enjoy some similar foods when they’re in the wild.
Do Prairie Dogs Eat Fruit in the Wild?
According to most biologists I’ve come across, prairie dogs do indeed eat fruit, but it only makes up around 1/10-1/5 of their overall diet. It depends on where they live and what sorts of food sources are available.
If they’re living in an area where wild uncultivated berries are found, then they’ll probably often snack on them. Since they often use so much energy to stay away from predators in this environment, they’re not going to get chunky off them like they might in captivity.
You probably don’t think of prairie dogs as scavengers, but they’ll sometimes eat after another animal who was enjoying a piece of fruit if it’s convenient for them to do so. In general, they won’t touch the seeds or core of harder fruits like wild apples.
They simply can’t digest them, which is actually why it’s a good idea for owners of domestic animals to take out these parts of the fruit. In some cases, owners have actually recommended to remove the rinds as well because they’ve found that these have a tendency to give their prairie dogs gas.
Overall, prairie dogs are opportunistic herbivores, meaning that they can adapt to a wide variety of plant-based foods depending on what they need at the time and how much food is available in their local habitat. Since fruit comes from plants, they normally love it.
The problem comes when prairie dogs eat too much fruit. Those living in areas where there’s nothing else to eat might eventually start to put on weight.
Naturally, they want to do this before winter, but too much in less lean times of the year can make them vulnerable to predators. That’s why wild prairie dogs have such a varied diet.
In fact, they have such complicated eating habits that I found multiple zoologists online making different claims about what constitutes their normal diet!
What Do Prairie Dogs Eat in the Wild?
A majority of a wild prairie dog’s diet comes from various tpyes of grass that they like to chow down on. You can also find them eating small seeds and nuts if they’re available in the area they’re living in.
As soon as autumn comes, they start to consume large sections of broadleaf flowering plants to help them prepare for winter. Once snow comes, pregnant females have a tendency to start consuming it in the hopes of getting some extra water into their systems.
When food is scarce, prairie dogs tend to dig relatively deep holes to look for roots and buds under the soil. They’ll also eat insects to add some additional protein to their diet, especially if they’re feeling hungry and haven’t gotten proper nourishment in a while.
Like with most mammals. female wild prairie dogs will nurse their young until they’re old enough to take solid food.
When I read all of this, I was pretty concerned because I knew that I’d never be able to keep up with such a confusing feeding schedule. As it turns out, though, domestic prairie dogs are a lot easier to care for.
Which Fruits are Better Than Others for Prairie Dogs?
Before you start to give any sort of fruit to your prairie dogs, you’ll want to make sure that the bulk of their diet comes from grassy hays like timothy as well as dark leafy greens and rodent chow. Turnip and collard greens as well as dandelion leaves and even kale can be great for prairie dogs.
Brussels sprouts aren’t really fruit, but they fit this definition and many prairie dogs really love them. That’s great to know, because honestly I can’t stomach those little things!
As far as what we humans would consider fruit, strawberries and raspberries tend to be attractive to prairie dogs, but you won’t want to give them to many of them. Try adding small bits of peeled and sliced orange or honeydew melon to the mix as well.
While these fruits are sugary, they should be relatively nutritious for your animals. Rutabaga is a good pick too, regardless of whether or not you agree it’s actually a fruit!
They love it as a treat, and it shouldn’t be an issue as long as you don’t let it make up more than around 10 percent of your animal’s diet when combined with other fruits and treats. If you’re lucky enough to find kohlrabi on a regular basis, then they’ll love the bulbs as well.
Giving them too much of any of these could make them chunky though, so watch that rodent waistline!