|
Post by Heather on Aug 31, 2010 23:21:39 GMT -5
Name:Erika Hf Forum Username: MaddiesMommy
1. Where did you first learn about natural diets for ferrets? ferret.com
2. Please describe the type of diet you would like assistance in switching your ferret(s) to. I would like to switch my ferret into a full raw but no live prey so frozen thawed.
3. Why are you interested in switching your ferrets to a natural diet? I want her to be healthier and live longer
4. Do you understand that switching your ferret to a natural diet can be a lengthy, arduous process? Its not an overnight switch. It can be a commitment of several weeks or even months. Your HF Mentor will be more then happy to assist you in switchng your ferret(s) to a natural diet, but you need to be equally as commited. If you aren't willing to tough out a potentially lengthy switching process, or if you have major life changes approaching (baby on the way, moving, starting school, getting married/divorced, etc) then it might be a better idea to wait on switching your ferret's diet until you have more time. Are you willing to make the commitment?
yes i am willing to make the commitment im good with a challenge.
5. How many ferrets do you currently have? What are their names? Ages? Genders? Do they have any health problems? Are they overweight? Underweight?
I have one Ferret she is a year and a half old her name is maddie and she is a female. she does not have any health problems.
6. What diet do you currently feed your ferrets? (Please include all treats, supplements, etc)
i feed her a mixture of totally ferret and 8 in 1 ultimate crunchy. No treats but ocassionally ferritvite and also lax for her hairballs. i also do feed her duck soup
7. Have you ever tried to switch your ferrets to a natural diet in the past? If yes, what happened? no i have not
8. What additional information about yourself or your ferrets would you like to share?
im 18 in college. new to the ferret owning.
9. How often during the week do you have access to a computer? everyday
10. Please post a picture of each of your ferrets (if possible). [/i]
Hi and welcome to the mentoring program. In a little while your mentor (Hurricanekatt) will introduce herself and you can get started on a new adventure in natural ferret care and diets. Please remember to post regularly (daily or as per arranged with your mentor) so that your mentor can assist you move along safely in this adventure. If you experience computer difficulties or are going to be away, please notify your mentor and most of all relax and have fun . Your mentor is here to help you on this journey. ciao
|
|
|
Post by katt on Aug 31, 2010 23:45:04 GMT -5
Hey! I will be your mentor! This is my first time, so it will be a learning experience for us both, but hopefully we can make the switch to raw as smooth as possible for both you and your fuzz. Name: Katt HF Screen Name: HurricaneKatt Location: Anchorage, Alaska About Me: My favorite color is..... Green and Purple My favorite food is.... Depends on my mood…salmon, chocolate… My favorite holiday is....Christmas I like buying people presents! My favorite hobby is... studying. Just kidding. I like to do different types of art including drawing and painting. I recently started making dream catchers too. I enjoy horseback riding, playing with my critters, and enjoying time with my boyfriend. I like to listen to... almost anything genre wise, there are definitely songs and artists that I don’t like though. If I had to pick a top favorite…probably rock. I collect...everything: animals foreign money Something about me you might be surprised to know...I am a premed student in Alaska graduating this May 2011 with a Biology degree. I’ll be taking a year off to enjoy myself, work on my application, and visit Africa before applying for Medical School in the next round. I became a mentor because...I really like helping people (hence the whole wanting to be a doctor thing ) and animals. I am a strong supporter of a natural diet and probably bore most people that I meet to death ranting about raw diet and why it is the best way to go…this way I can rant to someone who actually cares! About My Ferret: Koda – male, Real Canadian, not quite a year old (was about 8 weeks old when I bought him in December 2009), Sable. Gave him raw the second he came home and neither of us has ever looked back. He is a real trouble maker and is pretty well known around the forums as such. He is my first, and so far only, ferret and though I have not had him long he has forced me to learn and learn FAST! He has managed to eat several rubber objects (had to have surgery!), and is constantly finding new trouble to get into. Loves digging the carpet up, has a very serious oral fixation (if his mouth can stretch wide enough for his teeth to touch it – he will chew it), will rearrange the room to reach things, has learned how to levitate, and is anal around little monster. He is also very strongly bonded to my boyfriend and I, and can be a huge love bug. When the endless energy is finally burned off, he will curl up in our laps, give us kisses, and fall asleep. As you can tell, I have this problem where I can’t stop talking about him or taking pictures of him… About My Natural Feeding Experience: I've been feeding raw since December 2009 when I brought Koda home. Thanks to this forum, I was ready for a fuzzball to come home with my freezer stocked with meats! I gave him a raw chicken wing his first night home and that was the end of that! He is fed frankenprey, f/t roents, and live prey. I still consider myself fairly new to raw diets, but I have been reading and leanring since beofre I brought Koda home. I am always on the forum, and various websites tryng to learn more about ferrets in general, and especially raw diet. Koda is healthy, energetic, has super soft fur, and smells so good that people reglarly comment, aking me what perfume or spray I sprayed him with! I love telling them: Thanks to a raw diet - he just smells that good naturally! Type of Mentor: In Training! I feed frankenprey, raw meats, bone-in meats, ground meats, frozen/thawed rodents, live prey, and recently added (for treats and supplemental) freeze dried raw. I have never fed kibble so I can’t help there… My Specialty: Trouble makers! Especially only ferrets.
|
|
|
Post by maddiesmommy on Sept 1, 2010 0:33:59 GMT -5
yay i have a mentor im so E X C I T I E D and we have some things in college im in my first year in college and my major is biology im hoping to major in marine biology tho when i transfer
so hmm where do we get started? what do you wanna know ?
|
|
|
Post by katt on Sept 1, 2010 1:39:06 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by katt on Sept 1, 2010 2:10:09 GMT -5
Oh yes, and what time zone are you on and what time(s) roughly are you usually online so that I know when the best times are to check here for updates?
|
|
|
Post by maddiesmommy on Sept 1, 2010 10:12:30 GMT -5
well i havent made the duck soup yet for her but her previous owners gave me there recipe and what they used the recipe i would like to try is 3 Tablespoons of 8 in 1, 1 jar of Gerber Chicken 1st stage, 1 teaspoon light olive oil, 1 teaspoon of chicken broth. do you think that is any good? i would try the frozen prey but i doubt my mother would allow that she would freak out and my boyfriends grandmother tends to loose her voice when a rodent such as a mouse is found. im not sure whats frakenprey though? heres maddie btw =) i hope you like her thats me and my boyfriend
|
|
|
Post by maddiesmommy on Sept 1, 2010 10:15:11 GMT -5
Oh yes, and what time zone are you on and what time(s) roughly are you usually online so that I know when the best times are to check here for updates? im also in the eastern time zone where right now it 11:14 am im mostly online in the morning alot and tuesday and thursday im on after 10 since thats the time i get out. on the other days im usually on all day.
|
|
|
Post by katt on Sept 1, 2010 13:24:24 GMT -5
Awww She is adorable! And of course I like her - she is a ferret after all! She reminds me of my Koda in the first sleepy picture. Ok, I am on AK standard time, so quite a bit behind you! lol But I am on typically after 2:00 or so my time, sometimes earlier, and usually going late into the night. Lets start with the Duck Soup and see how she takes it. That recipe seems ok, and we can modify it as we go. What is your usual feeding schedule? Like do you feed twice a day, leave Kibble in the cage all day (Free Range Feeding), etc? Can you try giving her some of the soupies tonight? If she was getting it before, she should eat it just fine, but lets make sure of that first. Once we know for sure she likes it, we can go from there. I have a feeling that this will be the easy step! Ok, so in the meanwhile, lets figure out what kind of...tools you have. Do you have a strong blender, a meat grinder, bone shears...? What things do you have to chop, grind, and process raw meats? Many people use meat grinders, but I have never needed one - I find that a simple blender (Magic Bullets rock!) works fine for blending up meats w/o bone. You will however want something for chopping up bones in the hopefully near future. We have some time before we get raw bones in her diet, so why don't you shop around for something you like? If you have bone shears in a store in your area, you could try them out on a chicken wing or drumstick and see how they work. Then you can return them if they are too tough. I personally am a HUGE advocate of Ulu knives. BEST cutting tool in the universe! If you don't find a good bone cutting tool by the time we are getting close to adding bone, I can find you an ulu. They are worth every penny. Also - do you have a coffee grinder? If you do, start holding onto eggshells whenever you cook eggs and you can make some calcium powder to add in a bit here and there - esp before she is getting bones. If not, don't worry too much about it we can manage fine without it. Frankenprey is essentially just another term for balanced raw feeding without whole prey. In order to keep up a healthy fert on the raw diet, you need a good balance of muscle meat, organs, and bones. Essentially the idea is to recreate the proportions that Maddie would be getting in the wild by eating whole prey and scavenging. The diet is primarily muscle meat, with a small percentage of organ, and regular access to bones - but not too much bone. There is an actual percentage out there, I will have to find it again for you... anyways, by providing muscle, bone, and organ you are making a "frankenstein" version of whole prey to keep the diet balanced. You might want to consider pinkies, and f/t whole prey. Here are 2 ways around the parentals. Pinkies are small and could easily be blended into soupies. Both pinkies and fuzzies are small enough that you could buy a few, and feed them immediately so they wouldn't sit in your freezer and freak someone out. Once she is eating raw, getting her to eat whole prey shouldn't be too difficult, and then you could just buy a single mouse and feed it immediately (again - no sitting in the freezer). Even jsut occasionally as a treat. Just some ideas to consider. The hard part would be what to do about them mice in the process of teaching her they are food...lol But we don't have to worry about that just yet, and she will be fine without whole prey if you don't want to deal with all of that anyways. So...for now, duck soup tonight, see how she likes it and move to step 2!
|
|
|
Post by maddiesmommy on Sept 2, 2010 9:01:31 GMT -5
lol kudos to long post well i do leave kibble in the cage free ranged all day and soupies i wouldnt be really able to feed her it untill tommorrow because i work today and i wont be home till 10 so i wouldnt be able to watch how she handles it incase she throws up and stuff like that and my boyfriend i dont want to leave him with that lol ( guys )
i do have a blender and a food processor i would have to take a look at bone shears ive never seen one of those lol. i dont have coffee grinder is there someway can i do that some other way ?
i like the pinkies situation since it would be pretty easy to feed her it. so soupies tommorrow should i feed her in the morning when i see her up or at night ?
I was thinking also since were in two wayyy different time zones and i have your number i can txt u everytime i post if it says your offline and you can do the same.
|
|
|
Post by katt on Sept 2, 2010 12:40:27 GMT -5
Yeah, I tend to make long posts haha sorry. I talk a lot. Go ahead and feed her some soup either tonight or in the morning. It's up to you. When feed her soup though, go ahead and take the kibble away so that she doesn't have another option. It might be good to take it away for a few hours too so she is a little hungry, but I don't think you will need to do that this time. If she likes it and seems to handle it well - which I think she will, esp if her previous owners were feeding her that - then the next morning go ahead and giver her soupie for breakfast and just leave a little kibble in the cage too. If you have time, feed her the soupies and let her eat it all first, then put in some kibble. Usually ferrets LOVE their soupies (once they know it is not poison! lol) and will gobble it right up, so if you don't have time to feed the soupies then add kibble, if you just leave both in she will hopefully still eat the soup. And the texting thing sounds fine. I am off to let you know I posted...
|
|
|
Post by maddiesmommy on Sept 2, 2010 15:29:58 GMT -5
Ok I just have one question I don't want to feed her the chicken broth from a can since it contains alot of sodium so what else can I do
|
|
|
Post by katt on Sept 2, 2010 18:03:44 GMT -5
Hmmm that is a very good point. Ok try this. Get some boneless chicken, breast filets or something like that works well. Boil the meat and then blendit up really well with some water and use that instead. The nice thing about soup is you can control the thickness of it by the amount of water you add.
|
|
|
Post by maddiesmommy on Sept 2, 2010 18:13:50 GMT -5
Ok so I'll def be doing that instead then and add the chicken baby food too I'll let I kno how it goes tommoroow
|
|
|
Post by katt on Sept 2, 2010 18:41:25 GMT -5
Ok
|
|
|
Post by maddiesmommy on Sept 3, 2010 14:35:13 GMT -5
good news Katt i made her the soup and just fed her it and shes eating it. i made the soup to liquidy so what i did was put the thick part which was at the bottom of the container into a seperate one and the more liquid one in a different container. i thought she wasnt going to like it at all but she seems to like the liquid soup more then the actual thick one even though she alternating between the two. i made so much soup i had to put them into the ice cube tray and freeze them
also how long can i leave the soup in there until its not good anymore
|
|