New member, questions on raw feeding.

[xlunarserenadex]

Hello,
I own a ferret who is going on a year old shortly. I am looking to be able to start feeding him a more natural diet, like raw meat. He's on ferret kibble right now, but I want to promote his health with a raw fed diet. My family when I lived with them, never believed in raw feeding and fed our ferrets kibble. Since I moved out and got my own ferret, I'd like to know any reccomendations of how to go about feeding him raw meat and what kinds would be good for him. I'd like to get him started on it soon, because I'd like to promote his health.
Thanks in Advance from both him and I.

;D

[spiritualtramp]

Hello, and welcome to HF. Switching to raw can be a bit tricky, and takes a lot of patience and ingenuity, because sometimes we just plain have to resort to trickery!

To test the waters, first, I would get some boneless chicken or turkey breast, and cut some tiny, kibble-sized pieces. Try hand-feeding these. If your boy takes them, well right on! More than likely, though, he won't. So you can try a number of methods. First, try layering some small pieces of meat over his kibble. To get to the kibble, he'd need to go through the meat, picking it up with his mouth to move it, and getting his nose in its scent. This might convince him to try eating some.

If your ferret will eat soup (a liquified meat supplement, there are many recipes out there and everyone seems to have their own!) then you can try to blend the usual soup with ground meat, a small amount at first and gradually increasing as he becomes more accustomed to the texture. After some time of this, he'd be eating more ground raw meat than soup, and then you can start adding some small pieces and chunks to the ground mixture.

There are many other methods out there, but these two seem to be the most straight-forward and commonly-tried.

We have a mentor program here where you will get one-on-one advice and guidance through the switch, and I highly suggest you apply for a mentor. We are a little backed up with newbies but once you get your mentor, you can go forward full-steam ahead. Raw diets can be scary to do, and are easy to mess up because nutritionally, we have to be aware of what is going into their bodies and add or subtract things to meat their needs. They require specific amounts of certain things, and specific ratios for bone to muscle meat, and it can surely be a daunting thing to attempt to do on your own. For that reason, I do think waiting for a mentorship slot to open up is in your - and your ferret's - best interest!

Good luck and let us know what you decide. To sign up for a mentor, hop over to the Mentoring Program subforum where there is a thread to sign up in.