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Post by zoologist on Dec 15, 2009 14:56:09 GMT -5
hey y'all, i've decided to switch my boy chewey over to raw. i think it will help him out health wise as he is very thin and malnurioushed from his last family. (you can feel his hip bones and see them very easily) right now he is on dr. fosters and smith natural kibble. as all other newbies, i have the same questions and concerns. i've looked through the site a bit but couldnt find some answers i was looking for so bear with me! i ground up a chicken breast and have been adding it to his kibble. last night it was at 25% kibble 75% ground chicken. i noticed he was eating the chicken first and picking out the kibble so tonight i am going with pure ground chicken. i've been putting ferretone on the chicken and kibble to entice his appitiate, but i've been told i dont need it anymore, your thoughts? when should i start adding in ground bones and organs? i was thinking about getting a cornish hen ground up with the meat/bones/organs to feed him. can i coninue to feed him ground meats and bones or should i start switching him over to larger pieces and bones? if i grind up everything together do i still need to feed him organs 2x a week and liver 1x a week? should i feed him those seperatly and grind up just the bones and meat? i know chicken is readily availiable as is beef and pork but where would i get meats such as rabbit, goat, quail or anything more 'exotic'? ( not online!) have you had any trouble going into the supermarket and asking them to grind up a whole chicken for you? is there anything else i'm missing/should be adding to his diet? (i have calcium powder for my turtle i could add) thanks! seems to me chewey's switch to raw will be an easy one!
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Post by jojodancer on Dec 15, 2009 15:10:56 GMT -5
i don't think you need the ferretone anymore if he is readily eating it.
If you are only grinding up the chicken meat, it isn't a 100% nutrious meal, though, so you'll want to add organs and bones to it as you lessen the amount of kibble.
Personally, since I feed commercial raw, which is everything all together, I see no problem with feeding the organs, bones, and meat all at once every day. I have heard from some people, who have difficulty in getting their guys to eat their organs on"organ days." So my opinion, why not feed it all together?
I'd also advocate your first combination meal (meat, organs, bone) be finely chopped, or he may pick out the bones and organs and not get a nutritious meal.
As for different types of meat, you can either find an oriental market near you, or, in order to add variety, you can add commercial raw (like stella and chewys, AFS, bravo, NV, or primal) to the diets to introduce different meats.
my two cents - but I'm not a mentor or anything, and I prefer to feed commercial raw.
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Post by Lynxie on Dec 15, 2009 20:54:36 GMT -5
Walmart sells duck and goose, though they are a bit expensive. Your best bet for 'odd' meats are going to be a butcher or an ethnic food store.
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Post by ccretarolo on Dec 15, 2009 23:33:21 GMT -5
If he's willing to eat the meat without ferretone, I see no reason to continue giving it. If he has a dry coat though, mix another oil (olive oil, salmon oil, emu oil) in with the ferretone and keep on giving it as a treat. If you want, you can gradually reduce the amount of ferretone that you keep in the bottle until you completely phase it out of his diet.
As for how to feed the meat, I would suggest trying to get him to eat larger pieces. Ground bone just doesn't have the same dental benefits as pieces of bone. Ozzy has been on raw since he was 7 weeks old and still has pearly white teeth at 10 months. Mogli had horrible, almost yellow teeth when I got him but now that he's been on raw for a while, there's only a hint of yellow discoloration. While any form of raw is great, I like knowing that my boys will never need a dental cleaning.
As for when to add organs and bone, do it as soon as you can. I personally give my boys an organ mush that's thinned down with raw egg. They love it and it's really easy to make and store. Of course, you could always have 3 ground days a week where you combine the boneless meat with organs to make the organ meat more palatable. It's entirely up to you and your ferret's preference.
As for "exotic" meats, I get mine from an Asian grocery store. They have duck heart, heads, legs, wings, and liver... Then there's the pork heart and liver. I also get anything that looks decent (from a ferret's POV) that's less then a dollar a pound. The only thing that didn't go over well was the cleaned (unbleached) cow intestine. Not that I can blame them though... It smelled horrible.
As for calcium, it's really better to give a ferret ground eggshell as a calcium source until you can get him to eat bone. Reptile calcium powders are cooked most of the time so it won't do much good for a ferret. Another way to get calcium in his diet is to ask a butcher for the bone dust from their meat saw. My boys went nuts for it although you would have to give a lot of it since it's mixed with meat particles. Also a lot less time consuming then grinding up eggshells into a fine powder.
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Post by Heather on Dec 16, 2009 0:11:08 GMT -5
I've read through your questions and the responses that you've got. They're sound and very good , so I really won't add much to them;). I feed ground rmb (raw meat and bones) along with organ meats as I have several of my guys who don't like the texture of liver or perhaps the taste but they won't eat it alone. So, I second what has already been said. Almost all my little ones were started on ground mix, that way I don't have to worry about balancing their food. The bone, meat, offal...everything is there. You can continue to feed this mix forever if you choose but it won't work the jaw muscles and it won't clean the teeth as well as eating whole meat. It also won't offer the stimulation that would be offered by wrestling with a whole piece of meat wrapped around bone. I personally would start moving him over to a meat bone combination as soon as he's willing to try it. If you move too quickly he will dig in his heals and backtrack, so go easy, don't push him too hard. I would stop the ferretone as soon as you can. Offer marine fish oil, salmon oil, something like that. I switch between a couple of brands but always meat based. Ferretone has some really horrible preservatives and other junk in it, that's not good and there are much better alternatives, so why not feed them . Most supermarkets, even private butchers won't grind whole chickens for you unless, they're already grinding pet food. They can't because it's classified as contamination on their grinder. So, whatever grinder they use must be designated for pet use only (my butcher used to do this, this is why I know and why he doesn't do this anymore. His pet grinder did a massive meltdown). You can make do with ground egg shell, until you find a source to grind your bones or your little one eats bones on his own. You can do various things to get him to eat his bones from adding them to his soupy as small chunks to taking a hammer to the bones, to just offering them to him. Good luck on your endeavour and please continue to ask questions and do your research. I'm sure your little one will enjoy your work and be healthier for it. ciao
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Post by sherrylynne on Dec 16, 2009 1:20:09 GMT -5
With mine, I started them on a soup(pureed), and then ground, then larger chunks, then bone, then organ, with no problems. I think a lot depends on what you are comfortable with doing. Mine refuse to touch any form of ground anymore, so they get organ days, bone in days, and muscle meat days. They didn't like the organ for a while, so we did that as a soup until about 6-8 months ago. Now they adore their chicken livers Whichever way you choose to go, as long as they are getting approx. 70-80% meat, 10-20% bone, and 10% liver and other organ, they'll be fine! Although there's no reason you can't mix and match as well. Mornings premade raw, evenings- bone in or muscle meats!
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Post by vkoslin on Dec 16, 2009 17:56:17 GMT -5
Hey Zoo! The general guidelines for feeding organs/bone/and meats can be bended, more or less. The liver really can't be fed more than once a week bc of vitamin k (someone back me up on this?), and too much of it can really hurt them. But, really, I feed cornish hens a lot and the tiny bit of liver in there won't hurt if you feed it a couple times a week. Compared to a chicken liver, it's about 1/3 of the size, and usually divided by all my ferrets, its not a big deal. So, really, I think the organ thing can be fed loosely, as long as they are eating it a few times a week, in more or less ways. Bone is hard to get newbies to eat sometimes. A trick I use it to cut the chicken bone open so the marrow is exposed. The taste of marrow is awesome to them! See if that works. If not, grind it up! Ground meats are great to start with, absolutely. But, sooner or later they will need to use their jaw muscles and work for their food to be healthy. In other words, they can't be on ground forever. But it's the way I started and every now and then, they definitely get ground, as I can't feed them liver without it hiding in the ground
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Post by zoologist on Dec 16, 2009 20:36:09 GMT -5
If you move too quickly he will dig in his heals and backtrack, so go easy, don't push him too hard. i think i did that last night i mixed together the last of the chicken breast, a liver, and a chopped up a chicken neck (with bone) until it was fine chunks, and i *tried* to grind up giblets with it too. he's not as enthusiastic as he was about the plain chickenbreast i actually caught him taking a large piece of ground chicken neck out of the dish and throwing it to the side so he could get to the kibble underneath. when i put it back he gave me a look and threw it out again sigh, its back to a mixture of kibble, ferretone and the chicken neck/breast/liver combination. hopefully he will eat some of it this time. he just doesnt seem as hungry as he usually is... think he's 'starving' himself instead of eating something icky?
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Post by sherrylynne on Dec 16, 2009 20:58:17 GMT -5
If they don't like what they're given, generally- they won't eat it, stubborn little sods that they are . They can also be very lazy about eating their bone. It does take work to chomp through it! A ferret also needs to work up jaw strength to be able to crunch those bones! It would be like you being a couch potato, and then trying to run a marathon. Ain't gonna happen . Over time with eating the muscle meats, their jaw strenghth will build up to be able to eat chicken wing tips, then small bones, then the regular necks, etc. But it does take time.
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Post by zoologist on Dec 18, 2009 21:15:42 GMT -5
so, he still hasnt eaten the new raw and kibble mix. im going to try to the puree the raw a bit more (put it in a blender, perhaps?) and use it as a 'gravy' over the kibble. think that would work?
im kinda bummed out, i thought we were doing pretty well with this....
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Post by sherrylynne on Dec 19, 2009 9:56:54 GMT -5
I think I'd try pureeing the raw(I use a blender for this also), and just start dabbing his nose with it, so he has to keep tasting it.
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Post by zoologist on Dec 19, 2009 9:56:55 GMT -5
i ended up tossing out the breast/neck/liver/giblet combo cause it just didnt seem right (how long is that stuff good for anyway?) i ground up a chicken neck and some kibble and added some ferretone. he seemed to enjoy licking it from my fingers but he wouldnt touch it if it was on a spoon or in the bowl. and when he got a big chunk of kibble or bone he would stop licking, struggle until he LEAPED out of my hands, ran under the couch and dropped off the chunk of whatever, didnt eat it and scurried away until i could catch him again (is that normal?) came in this morning and he hadnt touched the bowl since i put him up last night. grrrr.
help? Vicki said i would be wasting raw at the beginning but i dont want to starve the poor boy.
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Post by sherrylynne on Dec 19, 2009 10:07:12 GMT -5
For mine, that's why I had to do the raw puree and the kibble separately. Otherwise I wound up tossing WAY too much raw AND kibble for my pocketbook. And yes, running and dropping it is normal if he doesn't want to eat it. I'd take the kibble out the night before when I went to bed, and not put it back in until they'd had at least some of the raw soup in the morning. A little bit of hunger certainly won't hurt him, and will make the raw just that wee bit more appetizing
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Post by zoologist on Dec 19, 2009 10:21:30 GMT -5
he doenst seem to care if there is kibble in there one way or another... can i just take the kibble out of his diet completely and just keep with the ferretone to entice his appetite?
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Post by Heather on Dec 19, 2009 17:46:17 GMT -5
If I understand what you're saying correctly is that you want to take him off kibble all together and do a cold turkey switch? I know that it has been done, but I'm not a strong proponent of this switching method. Your ferret is a secondhand fuzzy... you haven't mentioned his age but I will guess that he's older than a year. You do mention that he's underweight. You also mentioned that he liked the chicken breast (either ground or finely cut up)...go back to that. When you get stuck, you go back to the beginning or to the point that they were eating willingly. Don't mix kibble with it (unless you want to bread the cut up chicken with a fine dusting of it). I personally wouldn't add kibbles at all. See if you can get him to eat just the meat. No liver, gibblets heart...nothing, just the meat. That's where you start ..... back at the beginning . For the while that you're going to proceed with this, take away his kibbles (just a couple of hours), play with him, have fun...then catch him and get him to eat a little piece of meat. If he eats it willingly, see if you can get him to eat some more. If not, no big deal.....play with him some more, then catch him and get him to eat another piece. You can do this for a few day or a few weeks for that matter. There is no timetable, each ferret has their own schedule, because you're still feeding kibbles, you diet is balanced. Let us know how it goes ciao
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