Oh cool about the organ meats. The idea behind the mixed meats, introducing organs, bones, early is that you want your ferrets to be curious about food. If you get them eating one thing first, then something else, then a third thing, some ferrets will still be picky. It's more like a series of switches than having them interested and curious about food.
If the chick wing strips worked for one ferret, continue that game occassionally maybe one a week or once everyother week. Ferrets lern from eachother, and if they think they are "missing out", they may start joining in the fun.
In the mean time....you can do the chicken strip thing with chicken meat (or other meats) rather than a wing tip. Strips are great toys. Your kids like beef, which is awesome since it's more strongly flavored . Organ meats are more strongly flavored as well, so here's hoping you get lucky with the organ meats too!
WIth chicken, the flavor of breast meat is bland. Thighs and darker meats have a higher fat content, more moisture, more taurine, and better nutrition than breast meat. Breast meat is fine to feed, but you want to mix meat types and cuts of meats to make sure you're covering the entire range of nutrients.
I always find that "food games" are fun for the ferrets and their owners as well - thank god for bathrooms and/or bathtubs! They're easy to clean
The other really neat thing about food games is the bonding that takes place with you and your baby. You'll learn your ferrets' likes/dislikes and be able to spoil each one individually. Then they be all over you and very demanding with their behaviors
. One of my girls sits at my feet, stares at me, and squeaks when she wants something. You'll be AMAZED at how well a ferret can comminucate what she/he wants. It's pretty cool!!!
Yes, the egg yolk is a great bath tub game if you wish to serve it alone as an enrichment game. if so, place the yolk intact on a flat plate or low-sided cat food dish. If they're not interested, a little ferretone usually works.
Regarding ferretone, it has some presevatives in it and vitamin A, which can be overfed, so you'll want to use it more sparingly. If you find youself using quite a bit of tone, start mixing in a little extra virgin olive oil. The extra virgin olive oil serves 4 purposes:
1. hairball prevention (a healthier and cheaper version than ferretlax/petroleum product)
2. It has been show to kill helicobacter pylori bacteria in laboratory studies. they don't know if this holds true in the stomach - studies are under way. Ferrets typically have some helicoberter mustelae (bad spelling, but I'm too lazy to look it up
), which can cause ulcers in ferrets if it gets out of control. There's speculation that the extra virign olive oil may help prevent and cure ulcers in ferts.
3. Saves money - it's cheaper than the little tubes of petrolem grease and ferretone. You may want to keep some of the ferret lax around in case you think you may be dealing with a partial obstruction. But obstructions commonly result in a trip to the emergency room anyway.
4. No risk of overfeeding of vitamin A. All vitamins in the olive oil are natural form. SYthetic vitamins can be questionable in terms of quality and questionable in terms of whether or not the body gets what it needs and absorbs the vitamins efficiently. Worse yet, they may absorb too may of one thing such as vitamin A. Excess fat soluble vitamins hang out in the body rather while water soluble vitamins get "peed out"
The ferretone does have taurine, which is just about impossible to overfeed in any quantity. Taurine is found in darker meats (lamb and heart meat are particulalry high in Taurine. Poultry DARK meats contain more taurine.)
My holistic vet recommend supplementing with Taurine. I mix 500-1000 mg Taurine in their food daily. Many people don't bother with this if they feed heart meat on a regular basis, but it's beleived that Taurine can deteriorate when frozen over time. Taurine is a fairly cheap supplement. It comes in capsules that are easy to pull apart and mix with food.
If your brats don't like a certain type of meat. you can take a strip and "infuse" ferretone into the meat by pounding the oil into the meat with a meat tenderizer/fork, etc...anything that breaks down the meat tissues a bit to make the oils sink in more.
In the food bowl. tiny amounts of the disliked meat can be mixed in with the beef. Over time, increase the disliked meat to replace some of the beef. Most will accepth the new meat over time. If this is not working, place a small bite of the disliked meat in the ferrets moth daily. AT first they will probably spit it out. But getting the taste on their tongue is an important part of teaching them they can eat something!
Happy food fights
-jennifer