Post by katt on Jul 10, 2010 11:42:59 GMT -5
Cross Posted (with permission) from the "dogster raw" forum. Original thread can be viewed at: www.dogster.com/forums/Raw_Food_Diet/thread/560042/1 . The "catster" version of this thread can be viewed here: www.catster.com/forums/Raw_Food_Diet/thread/560455
I think one of the big reasons that people state for not wanting to feed raw is the time it takes to feed it. For the most part, I believe this is a common misconception about the raw diet, that you have to dedicate a lot of time to doing it properly.
So just to demonstrate that raw really doesn't take up all your time, I'd as you raw feeders to answer a couple of questions. Maybe this will help some raw-curious folks to give it a shot
1) How much time, in the average month, do you spend shopping for raw (or whole prey) ferret food?
2) How much time, in the average month, do you spend preparing raw (or whole prey) meals?
3) How much time, in the average day, do you spend feeding your ferret? This includes prep time, feeding, and cleaning up afterwards.
1) How much time, in the average month, do you spend shopping for raw (or whole prey) ferret food?
Less than an hour. When I go to the store to get groceries, I just stock up on tons of meat, then prepare it (see below) and freeze it. That way I only have to go to the store for meats once every few months. When I am not stocked up, I just pick up a new meat at the store every time I go, which is at least once a week anyways.
2) How much time, in the average month, do you spend preparing raw (or whole prey) meals?
Maybe an hour or two. I stock up on all the meat I need for a while, then I spend about an hour chopping up all the meat, cracking the bones (I cannot stress what an amazing tool an ulu is, cuts the meat, skins the meat, chops the bones all so easily). I then split the prepared meats into ziplock bags, each bag containing a few days (2-3 usually never more) worth of food. Toss it in the freezer and done. A day before I need fresh food, I move a bag to the fridge to thaw. When I serve it the next day, it is still partially frozen and stays good in the cage longer as well as helping to cool a hot fuzzy. That night it is thawed, and he gets the rest of the bag the next day when the new bag comes out to thaw. SO easy!
3) How much time, in the average day, do you spend feeding your ferret? This includes prep time, feeding, and cleaning up afterwards.
10 minutes tops? It takes a few seconds to toss some thawed, pre-pepared meat into the cage (and if I don't have any it takes about 2 min tops to cut some up really quick). I primarily free feed so the food stays in there all day. Then I get home at night and toss any uneaten dried food in the garbage (5 seconds), and before bed throw in some more pre-prepared meats.
Once every other day or so I do a quick search of the cage to make sure there are no hidden stashes and grab those - that takes less than a minute because I know where the stashes are and usually get them when I toss the meat to begin with. Then about every week or every other week, I swap out cage bedding and vacuum the cage to get up any missed pieces of bone, litter, etc, and if meat was stashed under blankets they will need washing - they will need it anyways. That pretty much needs to be done regardless of what you feed, so I wouldn't necessarily add it to the time to feed raw. *shrugs* I do change out the feeding den box every few weeks and that takes 5 seconds; and to wash the food dish = about 1-5 min.