The Dusel Business goes raw

[yaya]

1. How many ferrets do you currently have? What are their names, ages, genders, and do they have any health problems (this is VERY important)?

Fionna-female-5+
Tino-male-7 months
Rufus-male-3
Molly-female-7
spunky-male-1
ozzy-male-8
Bueller-male-6

(the only health concern is we are currently on ADV qurinten due to two inconclusive blood tests with rufus) and we currently have Giardia going around

2. What are your ferrets currently eating? Include their main diet, plus any treats or supplements (such as duk soup).

-Ozzy is on a variety of Rmb and organs.
-tino gets daily krm and bonemeal in his raw soup and about 3 times a week he get rmb. as well as kibble
- fi,rufus,molly,bueller and spunky eat kibble mix (evo,chicken soup and natural gold)

Everyone gets raw duck soup daily
jerky treats
Re hydrated Stella and chewy

3. What kind of diet do you want to switch to?

I want to switch to a raw diet... no live prey

4. Why do you want to switch to this more natural diet?

Its a more healthy diet

5. Where/what/who got you interested in natural diets?

I have been doing research on and off about it.. ozzy came to me as a raw eating and i started to switch tino.. and have decided to switch everyone

6. Please list the current weight for your ferret(s). Do they appear overweight? Underweight? How is there muscle tone?

Fi- 1.14- healthy weight, petite
Tino- 4lbs- baby fat and winter weight- he has rolls
rufus- 2.1- recent weight lose of 2lbs- underweight-decent muscle tone
molly- 2lbs-petite-good weight and muscle tone
spunky-2.14-good weight and muscle tone
ozzy-5lbs-healthy weight and good muscle tone
bueller-2.4- gaining a little weight wouldnt hurt-ok muscle tone

7. What is the condition of your ferret's teeth/gums? (can you get a picture?)

Everyone has healthy teeth.. with the normal wear with age

if you really need a picture i can take them

8. Describe the texture/color of your ferrets coat.

Tino and ozzy;s coats are really full fluffy soft and bright
my other 5 are not as soft,fluffy or bright and thin.
bueller has a lot of yellow discoloring on his white coat

9. How often does your ferret go to the bathroom?

About every 2-3 hrs

10. Does your ferret's feces and/or urine smell?

It smells like poop and urine should smell... its not strong or over powering

11. Smell your ferret. How strong is their odor?

They smell like a ferret, its not a strong smell

12. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being completely lethargic and 10 being "through the roof!" what is your ferret's energy level?

They all have very high energy levels at about an 8
except fionna who is at 5

13. How excited is your ferret about meal time (when fed kibble)?

Its available 24/7 so i cant really know how excited... they do get extremly excited over their soup and jerky treats

14. Have you attempted to switch from kibble to a natural diet in the past? If so, what methods have you tried. Be specific.

I havent really tried to switch.. tino pretty much just started stealing ozzy's food and eating it... ozzy came to me on raw

15. What other information about your ferret(s) would you like to share?

Fionna is very emotional she seems to take everything personal and gets depressed very easy. this has been going on since she lost her two friend ruby and bugs in very short period of time.

16. If you can, please post a clear photograph of EACH of your ferrets directly below:

I will try and get clear pictures of them this week

17.

a.) Do you understand that by starting this thread you commit to posting updates on the progress of your ferret(s) diet switch atleast every other day?**
Yes i understand

b.) Do you understand that if you will be away from your computer for an extended period of time you will need to exchange phone numbers (or email addresses if you don't feel comfortable exchanging numbers)via private message with your assigned mentor, so that we can monitor your progress and ensure your ferret's saftey during the switch?

Understood

c.) Do you understand that any threads that have not been updated in for more then a week (with no explaination as to why you are absent) will result in the deletion of the thread?***

yes

[Jaycee]

Welcome to the switch! Any questions, feel free to ask. We are all here to help you!

For starters, try cutting up little pieces of chicken breast to feed to them about the size of kibble. If they take to that, great! If not, don't worry. Mine never started off that easy, and we all have tricks up our sleeves if that is the case. You can blend the chicken in a food processor with their current kibble and slowly decrease the amount of kibble in the mix until it is gone and they are eating only chicken. I add broth to my mixture for moisture, and also decrease the amount of broth as I switch until they are eating solid chicken. Confuzzled yet???

[Forum Administrator]

Welcome aboard. I am going to review your info now and then we will figure out which mentor would be a good fit for you.

[Forum Administrator]

Okay, what I would do since they are already eating raw soup each day (btw, what is your recipie?) would be to put teeny tiny pieces of raw chicken into the soup (about half the size of a piece of kibble). Continue to give Ozzy his RMBs, before we do anything with his diet, we are going to bring the others up to speed.

If they take to the soup with the tiny chunks of raw chicken in it, then *gradually* increase the size of the chunks in the soup, while decreasing the amount of soup. The goal is to work them up to "thumb sized" pieces of raw meat (then we will work to get them eating raw meaty bones).

Give this a shot and let me know how it goes. Once we see how they react we can get an idea of which mentor would be the best fit for your particular business. In the mean time, I will monitor you.

[yaya]

beef ,,chicken ,lamb, duck what ever is on sale really
raw egg
olive oil
chicken broth
bone meal

then i throw in liver on Mondays and heart on Thursday


I will start adding the chunks of chicken

should i continue adding Tinos krm to his soup?

[Forum Administrator]

What is krm, I am not familiar with this.

[yaya]

kitten replacer milk... bev(crazylady) on fv says its good for kits as they grow and i should give it to him daily till he is a year old..and its good once a week as a supplement for my kids over 5

[Forum Administrator]

Honestly, I've never heard of feeding krm. I certainly respect crazylady since she has so much experience, so if she says to use it, I'd say go for it. I don't think its a *necessity* though, since I have never used krm with my ferrets and they are just fine.

[yaya]

ok well its kind of expensive so i may just phase it out anyway.
and tomorrow i will try the pieces of chicken in their soupie

it should be fun fionna and rufus dont like change much

[Forum Administrator]

Just take it nice and SLOW. It may seem like you are going so slow you arent making any progress, but going slow and steady is the key to getting stubborn ferrets to move forward. Cut the chunks SUPER small, and dont rush into increasing the size of them. It might take some time, but we will be here to help you every step of the way, so don't get discouraged.

[yaya]

i did their raw soup a little early today because i was excited to see what they would do with the pieces of chicken. (normally give it at 2am, gave it at 1:30am)
Tino,Molly and Ozzy ate theirs with no issue, Fi, Rufus and spunky acted like i poisoned their soup and wouldn't touch it at all so i gave them it without the chicken and they ate it..bueller thought he was funny and would take a piece out lick all the soup off and then when he thought i wasn't looking ran and hide it then ozzy went and ate what he hid.

the pieces were so tiny..i cut them up to be about this big [----] i will try again next soup and will try to get the pieces smaller for bueller, fi,rufus and spunky.

[Forum Administrator]

Thats good! Let me know how the smaller chunks go over next soup. You might have to cut them this big [--] but, even so, if they eat it, that is still really good!

[yaya]

Oct 18, 2008 20:09:03 GMT -5 Jaycee said:

Welcome to the switch! Any questions, feel free to ask. We are all here to help you!

For starters, try cutting up little pieces of chicken breast to feed to them about the size of kibble. If they take to that, great! If not, don't worry. Mine never started off that easy, and we all have tricks up our sleeves if that is the case. You can blend the chicken in a food processor with their current kibble and slowly decrease the amount of kibble in the mix until it is gone and they are eating only chicken. I add broth to my mixture for moisture, and also decrease the amount of broth as I switch until they are eating solid chicken. Confuzzled yet???

I dont want to mix kibble with chicken because they have been eating raw soup with out kibble and i feel like that would be a step back..wouldnt it?? so ya i am a little confused as to why i would do that

[Forum Administrator]

She probably didn't look through your file completely That is the general starting point that she tends to advise to everyone, that is probably what happened. Just stick with what you are doing.

[Jaycee]

Yeah, I messed up. I actually meant that for your ones that were eating the kibble mixture to get them going, and not as a step back for the ones eating the rmb. I had initially gone back and reread you post, but by then you and Giuli had moved on and I didn't think my post would come back to haunt me. My bad!

In any case, you are doing very well with the switch. Again, sorry about my misunderstanding.