Nipper, Spaz, and Bakemano's Switch

[crystalineshadow]

Well, I started them on the newest batch of mush yesterday. Strangely enough Spaz was the one who wasn't too sure at first that the new stuff was still food. Unfortunately their first bowl yesterday was still the old stuff, so they didn't have the spice of hunger to propel them over the edge into eating it without realizing that anything had changed. I've been giving them 3 tablespoons of food per bowl (1 ground turkey and 2 mush) and they are eating at least three bowls every day. I have started the new stuff out without the turkey add-in (so 3 Tbsp pure mush) just to make sure that they would still eat it. Since they are doing well, I am going to replace 1/2 a Tbsp of the mush with the ground turkey today and then again tomorrow to return it to the 1 to 2 ratio. If that goes well, I'll probably try a 1 to 1 ratio. By that time, their mush should be running out and when it does I'm going to try a kibble free batch and see if they are willing to eat that. If not, no biggie, I'll just freeze it for later and make them another batch with kibble in it. I have been slowly decreasing the amount of water as I decrease the kibble so the current recipe looks like this:

6oz of ground turkey
1 boiled egg
1 tsp of ground egg shell
2 tsp of olive oil
1 cup of water
1/8 cup kibble

Whatever the next batch of food they eat is (either 1/8 cup kibble or kibble free) I plan to use it as a base and add small turkey chunks instead of the ground. Once they are doing a good job of eating the turkey chunks in mush it would probably be a good time to introduce other types of meat. I'm thinking make the chunks half turkey and half another animal (chicken first since it's the most similar then pork, beef, and finally liver). This means that they will stay at that size of chunks for quite some time but if I can get them to accept all of the new flavors early on it should make it easier for them to handle in a larger size later. Do you think I should try the different flavors with each size of meat chunk? And do you think it would be better to have each day be half turkey chunks and half other or just rotate through the four flavors?

I'm not sure if I'll be able to get ahold of a turkey prior to the 15th, so I might start the rotation with chicken instead, depending on how quickly they get to that stage. I'll be going to the store tomorrow, so cross your fingers that I find some turkey on sale.

[crystalineshadow]

Ok, we're really not too fond of this new food. They ate it fine when it was just plain mush, but when I put in a blend of 1/2 tablespoon ground turkey and 2.5 tablespoons mush it gets second and third looks before it gets eaten. I guess I'll have to stay at this concentration for a bit longer before I up it to a full tablespoon of turkey. At least they're still eating the food. I'll take it as slow as they need to... anything to keep from having to go back to spoon feeding them everyday.

[buzzonesbirdie]

Ok so they are eating it even thought they are giving it a few dirty looks. Thats good. But yes I would say that make sure that they are eating this batch with no problems, sometimes you get stuck. Its normal.

The adding of different flavors sounds like a good idea too.

Im glad that things seem to be progressing nicley for you

[crystalineshadow]

Nothing really new to update with...

I notice that they have been going through a batch of soup every two days. I made a new batch yesterday with the same recipe as the last except that I used 3/4 cup of water instead of a full cup. I was momentarily worried 'cause they didn't seem to be eating very much but then I looked at the level in the supply container and realized that it was half gone. So worry averted, they are eating the food just as quickly as before but getting a larger percentage of the total in each bowl. Their current mush is just slightly thinner than the ground I am adding into it. I figure that I will stay at this concentration while I am adding in the different flavors and textures.

I am going to be moving them up from a half teaspoon to a full teaspoon of turkey in each bowl tomorrow (or I guess tonight for most of ya... whenever I wake up from the sleep that I'm on my way to right now). With any luck since I'm no longer getting any dirty looks with this mixture they will be willing to eat it right up. Or at worst start back with the dirty looks but keep eating.

On the down side, I wasn't able to pick up any turkey at the store yet (should be able to get some next Saturday). On the up side, I discovered that one of my two normal shopping stores sells both duckling and goose. And they're CHEAP!! Ok, now let's put that in perspective... The cheapest non-sale price for a whole chicken (that I have found so far) is $0.97 per pound. The duckling sells for $0.99 per pound and the goose for $1.99. The only other meats I have found for less than a dollar a pound is pork neck (at $0.99) and whole turkey (at 0.88 but the cheapest one in the store was $13... darn turkeys for being so big). I'm pretty sure they'll be able to eat most of the duck bones as they look to be only a little bigger than a chicken... I'm assuming treat the goose like a turkey in that regard?

I am going to stay at 1 tablespoon of turkey for a few days and then try out 1.5 (at which point the food in their bowl will be half mush and half turkey). If they agree to this plan then I will keep them there until I can get a turkey. That way I will know if they are objecting to the change in flavor or texture once I start adding chunks instead of the ground.

[buzzonesbirdie]

Ummm Goose, I have never feed it so not sure what to tell you. I dont buy whole turkey for my guys they get the turkey wings that I can find. I can usually find cornish game hen for relativly cheap around here too. Duck should be no problem. I wish that I could get it around here without having to go to china town. And get there so few times that my guys dont get much duck.

Sounds like you are moving along nicly with the soup and changing it as needed. Have you thought about getting some chiken and adding chunks of meat yet, as opposed to the ground??

[crystalineshadow]

I dont buy whole turkey for my guys they get the turkey wings that I can find.
Ahh, but I'm currently on a diet that won't let me eat dark meat, so if I buy the whole turkey then I can have the breast meat without paying over $2 a pound for it. Same reason I'm thinking of buying the whole chicken instead of just grabbing the leg/thigh quarters that are $0.59 a pound... chicken breast runs around $2.50 a pound when I buy it separately.

I can usually find cornish game hen for relativly cheap around here too.
Cheapest I've found cgh here is 2.29 apiece, but I haven't gone to the Sam's Club yet... I've heard that if you buy a multi pack there it costs less $$ each.

Sounds like you are moving along nicly with the soup and changing it as needed. Have you thought about getting some chiken and adding chunks of meat yet, as opposed to the ground??
I was hoping to start that soon. Probably if they take well to the full tablespoon of ground turkey I'll go ahead and give it a try. I wrote up the plan last night thinking that I was completely out of chicken, but when you asked I scoured the freezer and found where I had hidden the last two boneless thighs. I also have some that is already cut into chunks, but they're a bit larger cut than I was thinking of starting with and as little meat as they get each day I didn't want to thaw out the entire 8oz package just yet.

So far they haven't touched their breakfast, but it's a little earlier than they are used to being fed (I was feeling a bit under the weather last week and so sleeping until 6:30ish instead of 3-3:30 as is my usual) and also they are mad at me right now because I am having to re-potty train them and so they only have access to the bottom third of their cage. They are doing well with the training though (especially since I am switching from Yesterdays News to plain newspaper at the same time) so later tonight or tomorrow I'll let them have more room.

[buzzonesbirdie]

Turkey:

Ok I get it.

Chickens:

I do buy whole chickens for the sole purpose of feeding the ferrets. The chicken gets butchered and divided up into ferret sized protions and frozen that way. There is a wholesale meat place close to me and when we go and buy our meat there i get chicken for the ferrets too i can get 40 lbs of wings for $39.00 and 40 lbs of thighs for around $43.00 we then spend half the day dividing up meat and putting in frezzer paper and bags for the ferrets. Its nice cause then i have enough chicken in my frezer for about 2-3 months. Thank goodness for my deep frezer otherwise i wouldnt have the room.

Gamehens:

I can get two of them for around $3 from the one main store that I go too.

Chunks:

Ok I was just making sure that you were planning on do that. Sounds good what you have planned.

Good luck on the potty training.
Some of mine are a lost cause there

[crystalineshadow]

Well, the switch to more turkey didn't go very well yesterday. I left their breakfast in with them all day (about 8 hours) and they refused to touch it. By that time it wasn't good to eat anymore and so I tossed it out.

Made a half bowl, grabbed Spaz, and got her to lick it off my fingers. She refused to eat it out of the bowl (although she did enjoy licking the rim of the bowl) and when I tried a pinch of plain ground turkey (to judge the difference in her reaction between that and the one with mush) she refused to try it on her own but mostly didn't spit it out if I stuck it directly in her mouth. (This was a lot harder than that sentence makes it sound.)

Made another half a bowl, grabbed Nipper, and got her to lick it off my fingers as well. She also refused to eat it from the bowl. I tried the plain turkey with her as well (I knew from past experience that she's better with it than Spaz) and she licked around it while it was on my fingers, but once I stuck some in her mouth and she started eating it, she pretty well kept eating it.

When I put their night-time bowl in before I went to bed, Spaz started eating it (after a bit of hesitation). I went to sleep before Nipper woke up so I have no idea whether she had any or not, but upon getting up this morning the bowl is empty.

Sounds like I'm gonna be continuing with the half and half mixture for another day or two before I start switching them over to chunks.

The potty training is going better than I had expected. They are getting access to another level of the cage today (which also means that they will be able to climb up the sides as high as they like) and I get the feeling that they just needed a little reminder. The reason that it is so important to me to have them potty trained properly is that I am considering letting them have the run of my bedroom as well and it is the only room in the house with carpet. Seeing as I am not supposed to have any non-caged pets, I really hate having to choose between having Spaz dig up the carpet in front of the bedroom door and the possibility that they will permanently ruin the carpet with their litter box habits.

I truly envy you your deepfreeze. It is against the rules here for me to have one (or a waterbed, or a fish tank over 10 gallons, or a bird that is ever allowed out of its cage, or a ...) Kind of understandable for the people who live on the upper two stories, but I'm on (under) the ground floor. (My windowsill is about a foot above ground level and you actually have to go down six steps or so to get to my front door.) I can't wait until my lease runs out in December! Then I can let ferret math hit as hard as it wants to (or at least as hard as I can talk my boyfriend into).

[crystalineshadow]

Well, the more turkey in each bowl idea still isn't going over well. I was incorrect in my last post, it isn't a half and half ratio, it's 2 to 1 with the 2 being mush and 1 turkey. So, I decided to cheat and shake up the system a little bit. Instead of forcing them to continue with the 2 scoops of turkey, today I went back to one scoop but made the scoop of chunked chicken thigh. The chunks are a bit smaller than kibble sized and they seem to be getting eaten (Spaz has devoured about 3/4 of the bowl so far and is still eating and I'm not seeing any cleaned around meat pieces laying there). I also made the mush a little lighter on the turkey (made a double batch and used 10 oz instead of the 12 oz the recipe called for) because that's all I had thawed out.

OK, Spaz has just finished her breakfast. She ate at least 3/4 of the mush and looking at it I only see 2 chicken chunks in there. I put in 22, so it seems that she didn't notice them. At 22 chunks to the 1/2 tablespoon, you can see that they weren't all that big. I made them about the size of the drop down arrows here on the reply page (the ones next to message icon and colors).

I will continue like this for the rest of the day in order to make sure that Nipper gets a chance at the meat too. When tomorrow gets here I'll probably make the chunks a little larger. I'm thinking that I should wait until the chunks are about the size of my pinky nail (between 1/4 and 3/8 inch) before trying out different flavors.

[buzzonesbirdie]

First off Sorry that I didnt get back to you till today my husband had surgery yesterday and it was just a long long day. ( He is fine).

Glad to see that you thought about adding the chicken and that they seem to like it. Starting out small with the chunks and then getting bigger is the way to go.

I have no idea how I would surive with feeding the ferrets the way I do and not having a deep freeze.

[crystalineshadow]

I'm glad to hear that your husband is doing well.

The chicken is sort of hit and miss. From what I can tell, they will both eat it if the pieces are very small, but if they are larger then Spaz will eat them and Nipper will spit them out onto the floor. I haven't seen any actual spitting or moving of the meat chunks, however I have seen Spaz chewing and Nipper eats in tentative licks and I haven't seen her chewing, so I am assuming that this is what is happening. I'd say that when I have a mix of sizes in the bowl at least 2/3 of the meat does get eaten. I'm gonna try focusing on cutting the meat in small pieces, but my default dice is 3/16 to 1/4 inch cube so it takes some concentration to remember that they want me to cut it into smaller than that. I think I'll try a longer thinner strip instead... say around 1/8 by between 1/4 and 3/8 and see if Nipper will be willing to try that.

On a side note, I've been hit with ferret math. If all goes well I should be picking up my new little girl on Saturday. She is said to be about 1 to 1.5 years old, comes with her own cage, and is currently with a woman who doesn't know much about her except that her previous owner wasn't able to take good care of her. I figure that I'll start her on soupies just like I did these two and intro her to them slowly so that hopefully by the time they are all ready to live together they will be close to the same stage food wise. I'll add her to the thread once I get her and have changed her name (I kept Spaz and Nipper's names, but Weezer just doesn't sound right for this little girl). Now if only someone decides to get rid of a dark sable boy for a very low price my business will be complete.

[crystalineshadow]

Alrighty, ferret spaghetti seems to be a success. I cut the pieces 1/8 inch or less on both sides by a random length between 3/4 inch and 1 1/2 inches. They had this twice yesterday and no random meat ended up on the shelf. I'll try to keep an eye out and see if they are both eating the meat or if one of them is just eating around it. I'm probably going to just stay at this stage for a week or so because I'll be going out of town for a few days to be with my Mother for her birthday and my BF doesn't have much time in the mornings. I plan to mix up their food and put it into individual bowls in the fridge then all he has to do is dump the container into their food dish before he goes to work in the morning. I'm trying to decide if they should be fed 2 or 3 times a day while I'm gone. They will be fed breakfast at 3:45pm and dinner around 7am, just debating on whether to give them lunch around 1:30-2am or just make breakfast extra large (either half again as much or double the normal amount). I think that I'll be leaving after breakfast on the 19th and returning before lunch on the 23rd, however I need to check my Mother's plans and make sure that those dates are good for her. Whenever I figure out exactly what's happening, I'll let you know.

[buzzonesbirdie]

Ferret Math: on your new girl. She sounds wonderful. Remember lots of pictures are always wanted on this site

Ferret Sgetti: You thought of something that I never did when i was switching them. I glad that it worked out for you.
As far as how many times you feed them while you are gone either plan sounds good to me.

And no problem just let me know when you will be gone so I wont be looking for you.

[crystalineshadow]

Ok, it's confirmed now, I will be gone from Tuesday (5/19) through Saturday (5/23).

I remembered reading about cutting the meat long and thin in one of the archived switching posts, just glad that it has been working so far.

As for the new ferret.... well things aren't always what they seem. I do have a new ferret, it's just that this one came with a birdcage (not a ferret cage), is probably between 3 and 4 years old, and is male... it's amazing the transitions these furballs undergo while their new owners are in transit, lol. I'll post some pics as soon as I can.

His name is Bakemano (pronounced baa-kay-mahn-oh in case you were wondering) which is a Japanese word meaning ghost, phantom, and monster. He weighs 2.5 pounds and I think is a DEW (very dark red eyes almost pure cream body with a few darker hairs down his spine and the last half of his tail). He came with 8-in-1 Premium food, which I took away as soon as I got him home. I made up a batch of meat mush using 1 cup water and 1/2 cup of the girls kibble and he started eating it immediately. So far today he has eaten two bowls full, 1/8 cup mush per bowl and 1/2 tablespoon of chicken strips added to the first one. He took one small chicken chunk from my fingers last night, but didn't want a second one... he could have been full or he might be an extremely easy switch.

I was originally planning to keep him separate while I was gone and see how they got along together once I got back, but his current cage is WAY to small for that (17.5" square, 23" high) so I am now hoping that I can get him eating the same thing that the girls are and get him integrated before I leave.

I decided to have the girls fed a double bowl twice a day while I was gone and just remove any leftovers (they eat about 3 bowls each day). I already mixed the bowls up for that, but I mistakenly mixed up 2 meals chicken and 3 meals mush in each bowl, so I am going to have to slice up some more chicken and add another scoop of it to each bowl tonight. Hopefully I can get Bakemano to eat the same food that they are. Then I'll take whatever is left of his mush and divide it evenly between the bowls and not have to make each bowl smaller. Hopefully that will give us enough food to last until I get back home and can make up some more. Hard to say though, I have no idea how much a male ferret eats.

I won't be playing around with the girls food until I get back, however I will be updating you on Bakemano's progress until I leave.

[crystalineshadow]

Well, I'm headed out in a couple of hours. Bakemano is successfully living in the big cage with the girls and eating the same food that they are. I gave him a 'leftover bone' yesterday (a flat thighbone that I had just finished cutting the meat off of) and he nibbled a bit at the meat which was on it then deposited it in the litterbox. I line my box with newspaper so he could have gone back and gotten it at any time, but I don't think he did. I have a few more leftover bones in my fridge (I was planning on cooking them and giving them to my rats) so I'm gonna give him one of those each day until I get back just in case there's not enough food in the mush bowls. With any luck him being so into meat will cause the girls to start taking more of an interest in it.