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Post by ferretpalooza on Jul 22, 2008 23:29:21 GMT -5
My FN has covers on all the pans and my ferrets have a crap load of all kinds of beds and tunnels in the cage. Im a little hesitant because I dont want them to wipe their mouths or carry pieces of meat and stash all over the cage and then the room start reeking from rotten meat. The cage gets stripped and cleaned once a week but I could imagine it could start stinking if meat gets stashed. Also, do you leave raw in the bowl like kibble??? I have 7 in the cage and I read the into with ground meat, but I wouldnt really know who was or was not eating unless someone start losing a lot of weight. How did you guys deal with these issues at first?
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Post by Forum Administrator on Jul 23, 2008 2:27:10 GMT -5
My FN has covers on all the pans and my ferrets have a crap load of all kinds of beds and tunnels in the cage. Im a little hesitant because I dont want them to wipe their mouths or carry pieces of meat and stash all over the cage and then the room start reeking from rotten meat. The cage gets stripped and cleaned once a week but I could imagine it could start stinking if meat gets stashed. Also, do you leave raw in the bowl like kibble??? There are several ways to deal with this: 1. Get a seperate feeding cage (or two). Super pet "My first homes" work wonderfully for this (and they can be used for "sick cages/quarentine cages or even travel cages". They are fairly inexpensive. This is the one I am talking about: www.petguys.com/-045125602220.html2. You could make a remote feeding cage (check out the instructions on how to make a remote litter box, but just use it as a feeding cage instead: holisticferret.proboards80.com/index.cgi?board=cage&action=display&thread=3503. You could strip the bedding off of one of the Shelves and put a sterillite tub onto the tray. Cut a hole in the tub and secure it to the side of the cage. This way you can make a "feeding cage' INSIDE the FN cage. Feeding caves really help to encourage APROPRIATE stashing (as in stashing in an "easy to clean" place) Check out this post on feeding "caves": holisticferret.proboards80.com/index.cgi?board=enrich&action=display&thread=2304. You could remove the pan cover on one of the floors. This is what I do. I leave the ferts in the cage with meat all day and I dont have any issues with them dragging it into other areas of the cage. I remove the cover on one of the shelves. This allows two ferrets to share a piece of meat. For a larger business you might want to consider removing an entire floor cover. I have 7 in the cage and I read the into with ground meat, but I wouldnt really know who was or was not eating unless someone start losing a lot of weight. How did you guys deal with these issues at first?I would recommend talking to Jaycee about this, or reedgirl. Both are switching large businesses (of 10 and 11 ferrets) and they can give you tips on monitering your ferret's food consumption I will alert them of this post.
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Post by Jaycee on Jul 23, 2008 6:10:38 GMT -5
Hello and good morning! You sound just like me. I started on the switch with having ONLY 7 ferrets. I am up to 10 now!
Have you already started them on the ground meat? I found with my 7 that the soupie method worked the best. I started them with a chicken/kibble/chicken broth mixture. I dumped the chicken in the food processor and blended it up real well, then added kibble and ground it up together. I would then add the chicken broth (low sodium Swansons is what I used) and made the mixture as soupie or as dry as I wanted. If I wanted the mixture to be more like soup, I added more broth. Towards the end of this stage, my guys were eating the chicken and kibble mixture without all the broth added. It was more of a solid. At this point, you can start to cut back on the amount of kibble in the mixture, until it is only chicken....then start adding in kibble sized pieces of chicken to start the transition over to solid meat.
What I would do, in order to keep track of who is eating, and who isn't, I would make a chart with all of your guys names. When you see one eating the mixture, put a check mark by the name. I know with 7 it is hard to keep track of who is doing what!
Also, don't be afraid to "feed" your guys at first. Sometimes it takes a little TLC to get them to start eating the new food. I had to spoon feed the first couple of bites in order to get them started eating on you own. The good news is....this doesn't last long. Mine started eating pretty quickly at this point.
My method is a slower method of switching. But for my large group or varying aged ferrets, it was the easiest for me. Kits make the transition almost overnight...the rest needed more time.
As for the mess, we just made a remote feeding cave for our ferret nation. I am hoping the chicken will stay in there now. We also used a separate cage to feed the raw in. I used my inital ferret cage as the feeding cage, and it worked ok. The remote feeding cave looks like it will be our best bet. So far no chicken has left the cave! Yea!!!
Sorry this is so winded! You will do fine with the switch. I was scared at first, but the moment you see them eating raw makes you see how worth it the switch is! Good luck to you, and keep us posted!
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Post by ferretpalooza on Jul 23, 2008 8:31:03 GMT -5
Thanks for the responses. I havent started yet, they are moving in a new room but I am waiting on another fn level. I want to get them settled in the new cage/room before I start changing the food. (I posted more detail in a "newbie" thread). I will continue to research here and look up Bob Churches articles until then, I assume 7-10 days at most.
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Post by reedgirl20 on Jul 23, 2008 9:06:09 GMT -5
Hi, I know what you mean about trying to monitor the eating of a large group. I am currently switching my 11 over. What I had to do because I work long hours and can't be home to monitor closely is divide my group up. I have two of the FN 143 and I have blocked off the levels so I have two ferrets per level and in one case three ferrets in two levels.
I have to just feed my guys and leave in the morning but I ensure that everyone at least comes down and starts to eat breakfast. In the evening feed I can more closely watch and hand feed as needed after eveyone has had out of cage time as a group.
I leave raw food in the bowl all day but anything uneaten gets thrown out morning and night so it won't smell or attract flies. I feed on the bottom shelf of each level and I just quickly check for any stashes everyday. I use bathroom mats on the floor and in the kits cage who are very messy eaters as well as dig in the litter and play in the water bowl, I just swap the mat out everyday.
Hope that helps.
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Post by ferretpalooza on Jul 23, 2008 9:07:17 GMT -5
I was thinking, since they eat soupies every night, maybe I could swing by the store on the way home tonight and buy a small pack of thighs or breasts and cut into small slivers and freeze an ice cube tray of cubes of a little water and a bunch of the slivers and when I make the soupies, add a thawed cube of the slivers so they would start getting used to seeing some type of raw meat somewhere. That way the slivers would be covered with the soupies every night for a week. Does that make sense?
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Post by Heather on Jul 24, 2008 22:45:17 GMT -5
That would indeed be a way to get them used to seeing and maybe even eating some raw, or you could use ground and forgo the freezing end of it all together. Just add a small amount to your soupie mix. Either way would work. They may just take to it without complaining. There's nothing like having a jump on everything. ciao
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Post by ferretpalooza on Jul 24, 2008 23:56:27 GMT -5
Jayce, when you make your soup, is that with raw or cooked chicken??? Mine already eat soupies with cooked chicken and kibble. I also add ferretone, pingfords and nupro, but after reading a bit here, the nupro and ferretone will not be added to the next batch. I have been adding little bits of raw chicken. 4 of them have carried and stashed some under the recliner, 1 actually ate a few pieces. the soup method may work well since they love thier soupies and since I started using the pingfords, they wont eat it if I dont add that. I cant wait for the new level so I moved the cage tonight. I got a large sheet of linoleum and put under the cage. I am going to get a box for an eating bin on the bottome rack and put a pen around it so they can come out on the linoleum and eat the raw stuff if they want. I wet the kibble down tonight for the first time and they were eating it no problem. Ill start mushing it a little tomorrow. Maybe by next week, Ill add just a little ground meat.
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Post by Jaycee on Jul 25, 2008 0:09:02 GMT -5
Sounds like your feeding cage is ok! As for the chicken, I made mine raw from the start. You can start them on the raw now if you'd like. I also added initially the ferret vite and tone until they got use to the soupie, then I lessened the amount and gradually made the soupie thicker. I hope this helps you out! You are on your way! Good luck!
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Post by ferretpalooza on Jul 25, 2008 0:26:27 GMT -5
Did you use a food processor??? What kind of chicken?? and you just blended the raw chicken, kibble and chicken broth? Ha ha ha I cant wait to see their faces...hee hee Now if I did that, would it be ok to leave it in the cage for about 5 hours? I could take the kibble out in the morning and just leave that, may be with some kibble crumbs on top, that is, after I get them used to eating either ground beef or chicken chunks. At the time, all they are used to is creamy soup with cooked chicken.
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Post by Jaycee on Jul 28, 2008 5:53:24 GMT -5
I used the food processor to blend the chicken and the kibble...and I added broth to that to get it to whatever consistency you want. This mixture is ok in the cage for 6-8 hours depending on how warm the cage area is. Yeah...the poo is great!!!
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