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Post by spiritualtramp on Jul 20, 2009 9:08:39 GMT -5
Oh this is great! You really will love the cost-efficiency as well as how excited they get for mealtime. I'm glad you've decided to kick kibbles all together - you really will notice a huge difference in all aspects of their lives. Energy levels will be more stable, they'll be happier, healthier, poop less, smell less, and their teeth will shine beautifully. You're right about the basic breakdown of a raw menu - but of course as you move along and get a better understanding of items and their importance in the whole pyramid of things, you'll see opportunities to experiment a bit. Basically, we stress at least three sources of meat - ie three different animals per week. This is a bare minimum and I can't even tell you the last time I've gone below five per week - but based on what is available this is a good guideline. Since you said legs and wings are on sale you might as well pick up some. Many ferrets don't like chicken much but to be honest all my kids eat it and since it is cheap, I keep it as a part of their diet. Leg quarters are also often cheap (on sale at my grocery store last week for 69 cents a lb, score!) The great thing about feeding raw is you can base your menus upon things on sale, and cheaper cuts of meats. The cheap stuff often is fattier, tougher, etc - all things ferrets love and need. So keep your eyes peeled. In the beginning, I'd break up the wings into three segments, and keep the wingtips at the top of the freezer as those will be the first we'll try them with. Also pick up some boneless meat (chicken breast, or whatever meat you choose. Something bland at first would be best, so chicken, turkey, etc are good starting points.) But, again, we're jumping ahead of ourselves. Go ahead and post what you've been working out, and I'll help you critique it. I'm actually running off to work right now but I will post my own menu to give you an idea when I get home tonight. Mine varies greatly depending on what I have available or feel like buying so keep that in mind, as you certainly can switch it up as their tastes progress (and they will... bison :roll: ) In the beginning it is best to keep it bland though. To answer your question about whole prey - mine get it supplementally as treats a few times a week, but of course you can make them meals as often as you please. Since they are perfectly balanced meals, you would basically just ignore that meal from the raw menu and keep the other meals within the right ratio of 3/4/1. Are you planning on two meals per day? You could make the math easy on yourself and plan on whole prey at the same time each day, or five days a week, or something easy, and then keep the rest of the menu within the raw guidelines. Just make sure that the prey you are using does get varied in ages as you know, each age contains different nutrients so switching it up is best for proper coverage. Anyway, off to work, I'm really excited to work with you and your little ones! Let me know how the pinkies go over, and ask anymore questions that pop up. I'll be back on later  |
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Post by bindiferret89 on Jul 20, 2009 9:35:46 GMT -5
I know variety is key and I was planning on doing 2 meals a day, AM meals within the raw guidelines and PM meals as whole prey. I'm not quite sure how much to feed them since we're just starting, so I don't have exact amounts on any of these yet. I would also vary the ages of the prey I'm feeding.
Monday
AM: chicken wings
PM: mice
Tuesday
AM: boneless beef
PM: gerbils or hamsters
Wednesday
AM: chicken wings
PM: rats
Thursday
AM: boneless pork
PM: rabbit or guinea pig
Friday
AM: cornish hen
PM: mice
Saturday
AM: turkey necks
PM: fish
Sunday
AM: chicken livers
PM: mice or soups (not sure which recipe yet; I like Heathers, but that would cover the organ meats so I wouldn't need them in the morning on Sundays)
Let me know what you think!
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Post by bindiferret89 on Jul 20, 2009 14:16:07 GMT -5
I went to the grocery store today and picked up a few things to try whenever you give me the goahead, Erinn...boneless chicken breast, chicken livers, chicken gizzards & hearts, chicken wingettes, and small pork steaks. I know it seems like a lot of chicken, but it was cheap and I know chicken is supposed to be a good bland meat to start with. They were really lacking in the turkey department or I would have gotten some of that too.
Also bought more mice...pinkies are thawing as I'm typing this.
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Post by bindiferret89 on Jul 20, 2009 14:40:07 GMT -5
Well, all the ferrets are on the same page now about pinkies...nobody wants to eat them! I tried Ferretone, but they just licked it off. The new kids won't even eat Ferretone. Ginny tried biting the mouse when I dangled it like a toy, but prompty stashed it and forgot about it.
I left the pinkies in the cages with the ferrets so maybe they'll test them out.
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Post by spiritualtramp on Jul 20, 2009 18:08:38 GMT -5
Well, that's not remarkably surprising to me hahaha. Playing tug of war with them so that they can sink their teeth in sometimes helps, but like with Ginny - sometimes it doesn't. Are the new kids accepting soups? Maybe we can try a different route.
The menu looks good, but I'd change up the wings two days a week and swap one out for something with darker meat, chicken backs or quarters perhaps. Of course, in the beginning, your menu will look really, really limited, but it will expand and you'll find it's never the same two weeks running. Keeping a log is a great idea, especially while you're getting your bearings on the new schedule. I kept one for a long time, now though, I don't so much.
For soups, I'm a fan of mixing that up too. Sometimes I add organ meats, sometimes I make it with rabbit, sometimes with quail or pheasant, and sometimes I buy Pingford's Porridge and base a soup off of that. My kids love the differences and it's easy to make a soup from leftovers or commercial ground raw items, not to mention that they don't get too dependent on one recipe should they get ill and refuse any other foods.
Do the kids have kibble available all the time right now? To get them interested in the pinkies, you could try removing the kibble for several hours, and reoffering pinkies. As the Irish say, hunger is a good sauce.
Here is a sample menu of mine, I'll use this week's just for ease and to show you how I do this:
Sunday am: freeze dried foods & soups
Sunday pm: bison steaks
Monday am: chicken quarters (bone in)
Monday pm: liver/kidney puree
Tuesday am: lamb shoulders and mice
Tuesday pm: Cornish game hen (split in half is one meal just about for my guys)
Wednesday am: pork
Wednesday pm: chicken back/rib
Thursday am: Cornish game hen (other half)
Thursday pm: whole ground rabbit (Bravo! makes the logs, unfortunately I have trouble finding a steady source of rabbit.)
Friday am: quail
Friday pm: goat and mice
Saturday am: chicken wings
Saturday pm: chicken hearts and gizzards
Generally the larger animals like lamb, pork, goat, beef, etc, the bone is useless so I use those are the muscle meat meals, where as smaller animals (poultry and game birds generally) have perfectly sized bones for eating. So that makes it easy to remember your ratios too. Your kids will someday be getting much more whole prey than mine do currently, so it's a bit different, but you can see how that fits into the schedule. Something important to remember is that when feeding frankenprey, just liver as the organ is not enough - hearts are important sources of taurine, and if you can find them, kidneys and lungs can also be good sources of organ meats. As you know, though, organ must be in moderation as they contain high levels of nutrients that can become toxic if ingesting too much (vit a from liver is a major one.) Hearts are considered a muscle meat even though we talk about them as organs - just an FYI.
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Post by bindiferret89 on Jul 20, 2009 19:00:06 GMT -5
I take their kibble away for up to 12 hours (this was the maximum I read they should go without food) and leave their mice in with them, then replace the kibble if they don't eat the mice.
I haven't tried soups with the new kids and I've never been able to get my older kids to eat them, except once when I had to syringe feed them (which makes me nervous) when they two of them were sick.
I'm going to finish watching this show and then check to see if any pinkies were eaten. I know the new kids hadn't touched theirs an hour ago.
UPDATE:
The new kids didn't eat their pinkies, but I dug through and wiped out the older girls' entire cage and found no mice! I wish I knew who ate them!
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Post by bindiferret89 on Jul 21, 2009 3:07:07 GMT -5
I saw that Heather has a recipe for soups she suggests to a lot of people who are switching to raw diets. Maybe I could try that out or do you think I should continue with the mice? I could try the method of putting a little soup on their nose and lips to get them to lick it off.
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Post by spiritualtramp on Jul 21, 2009 8:44:00 GMT -5
I asked because I think switching to raw is often easiest via the soup method, this was especially helpful for my Marshall kids who were much more stubborn than my DMK or my private breeder boy (who both took to raw very quickly.) So, let's back up and try to get them all eating soups. Are you going to use Heather's recipe? Like I said, I switch mine up a lot. When I was using it as a tool to switch the kids to raw, since they all liked soup, I basically used my regular soup recipe and added ground raw meats to the soup, adding more each couple of days to make it thicker. Eventually, it was just all ground raw, and then I started adding tiny cuts of chicken into it. And increased those as they were accepted. The soups I used (and still use every so often) is Pingford's Porridge, www.pingfordsporridge.com . Mice are probably a bit too advanced for them just yet, though you can continue giving them to the older kids as someone was clearly eating them!! |
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Post by bindiferret89 on Jul 21, 2009 9:09:59 GMT -5
I have all the ingredients for Heather's recipe. I also have Duk Soup here, but no Pingford's Porridge. Could I use Duk Soup?
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Post by spiritualtramp on Jul 21, 2009 13:11:58 GMT -5
Is that the Marshall's brand? If you have it, you might as well use it up as not to be wasteful, but those powdered things generally aren't worth the money. They'll probably take to the flavor pretty easily though as that's the stuff they have at Petcos, right?
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Post by bindiferret89 on Jul 21, 2009 13:24:42 GMT -5
I skipped Duk Soup entirely and made something of my own based on a few different recipes I saw. I wasn't sure how much to make, so I just made a few cups. I know this isn't very balanced, but right now I'm just trying to get them to even taste it...
1-1.5 cups boneless chicken breast
1 chicken liver
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon ferretone
1 egg (I will leave this out next time) w/ shell
1 cup water
And?
SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!!!
Everyone, including picky Lucinda, tried it. Ginny and Sully particularly went NUTS for it and I'm going to have to make a lot more next time because Sully ate almost a whole big bowlful himself! The only one who isn't nuts about it is Nuka, but she ate a little bit, so there is hope, and she's still just a baby.
My next question is, how long can I leave the soup with them before I have to worry about it going bad?
By the way, thanks so much for answering my ridiculous number of posts today Erinn! I appreciate it a lot!
Also, when, if at all, should I return their kibble? When should I give their next meal? What should I give them?
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Post by bindiferret89 on Jul 21, 2009 14:57:05 GMT -5
I'm working on a two revised menus--one with whole prey and one without, as I'm finding myself in between jobs right now and may not always be able to afford to feed whole prey in addition to raw, at least for the time being. I am open to great flexibility in my menus, depending on meat costs and availability, but I'd like to have at least a guideline to go by. My only problem is I am having a hard time thinking of bone-in-meat alternatives to chicken. I saw that some Bravo! raw diets are ground bones and all and they offer a few different types of meat. We have a retailer of those products locally and I emailed them for prices. Any other ideas?
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Post by spiritualtramp on Jul 21, 2009 18:19:14 GMT -5
WOOHOO CONGRATS!! This is a great news and a perfect start!
The Bravo products are great, those are what I base my soups off of quite often to be honest with you! It gets some more "exotic" meats into their diets when I can't find them (my supplier has touch and go availability of fresh whole rabbit, pheasant and quail.)
Some cuts of pork and lamb have a bit of bone in them, but honestly my kids just gnaw on them, get as much marrow out as possible, and stash them, because the bones are too large to eat. Chicken is a major bones source here, as well as Cornish game hen and when I can get them, rabbit, pheasant and quail, and mice. But like you've said, it's harder to come by bones small enough for them to eat. Smaller turkey bones (wings are usually managable to a point) can also work, but mostly poultry is where the bones come in, unless you go for the ground things like Bravo! diets and other commercial foods.
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Post by bindiferret89 on Jul 21, 2009 18:25:01 GMT -5
Perfect! So do I keep giving soups for awhile from here? When should I give them chunkier bits of meat? Would you be up to chatting on AIM sometime? I feel silly posting 900 times a day on here  |
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Post by spiritualtramp on Jul 21, 2009 18:56:05 GMT -5
Keep up with this recipe for now, and in a few days we can try reducing liquid and making it a bit thicker. You can try the mice with the older kids of course anytime too as someone sure liked them AIM is a great idea! We can get to know each other better, too. My screen name is shesaces. |
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