Wonderful news!!!!
Your babies are making great progress, and Jaycee is already a a pro at how to switch since she's very experinced with her rather large crew!!! I also think it's wonderful when newbies help each other - great team work!
OK, So, some amount o loose stool is normal with a diety swith, and raw poops are never as "pretty" as kibble poops. I assume the squirt bombs are jsut some runny poops - not water poops, green poops?
occassional, slightly greenish poops can be normal during a switch, but htey can indicate food sensitivities. But if there's anything od in the stool (like excess mucous, lots of green, etc. just speak up! We switched Apple to mostly rabbit since he was aving quite a bit of trouble with chicken. A green poop is a "bile poop", whch means that food is moving too quickly through the system.
You may want to grind ip some egg shells into a course powder, which should help to firm the stool a bit. Use about 10-15% shell relative to the amount of meat. Use this as your meat coating bufore you coat with the kibble crumbs. ANother good thing to add with this would be either montmorillonite or bentonite clay, which can be found at some health food stores. just use a couple of big pinches the clay to coat the raw chunks along with the egg shell. If they still have the runs, you can add a litle more clay. But please expect loose stool, you don't want to use the clay to try to make a normal stool. By the way wild animals and people (kaopectate!) eat clay to address the runs. Another benefit of the montmorillonite clay is that it helps to pull toxiins out of the body. Nature's Variety raw frozen diet includes some montmorillonite clay, so small amounts can be feed daily as a nautral supplement.
Since your babies are being so flexible, I'd say offer them wingettes, offer them wysong chunks, the worst thing that will happen is they'll sinff it and walk away. They may just surprise you and chow it down on the spot! Just let your ferrts set their own pace (of course, if the poops are out of control, you may want to go slower for more adjustment timeto new foods.
SOUP- as we know, the main reason for feed ing soup is to get ferrets used to a high calorie, nutritious, easy-to-digest food in case they have surgery/get sick and loe their appetiite. Life is just a lot less stress with a sick ferret if you're not trying to introduce new food (i.e., soup) at the same time!!!
That being said, some ferrets love the taste of pedialyte others hate it. I recommend gradually adding pedialyte to your soup recipe since you'll want to be feeding pedialyte while your ferrets are on soup for ecoery purposes. Pedialyle is a pain because you can usualy find only the largr bottles - plus, it doesn't last longin the fridge. There's an easy way to deal with this...make Pedialyte ice cubes and store them in zip-lock freezer bags in the freezer.
You'll want to develop your soup such that it's thin enough to feed through a 10 or 20 cc feeding syringe. (no chunks that get stuck). If you need to get your ferret on soup ASAP for an insulinomic crash, you may not have time to start from scratch. This is when it's great to have your kids eat chicken or turkey baby food - it comes in small jars, it's readily available at all hours, it's ready to eat, it mixes well with pedialyte. As a ferret owner, I keep two things in my house at all times: baby food & pedialyte - just for emergencies!!! Pedialyte and baby food soup is a good thing to have your ferrets willing to eat. You can develop a more nutirious soup ( I like Pingford's porridge - convenient, cooked, which can be a good thing if your ferret's immune system low due to illness and/or prednisone - lower bacterial load is a good thng at this time. So, my soups include pedialyte and baby food, and pingford's porridge and pedialyte, and then fun soups that are raw-based and varied)
You can work on introducing on your soup stategy. The above is my plan, yours may vary. (I am a VERY paranoid ferret mom because I dealt with a LOT of stuff with my first set of ferrets, and I was a volunteer wildlife rehab specialist thathas dealt with animal emergencies for years!)
EATING LARGER CHUNKS OF FOOD. two approaches... use one, the other, or both!
1. just increase the size of chunks that are coated with shell, clay, kibled, freezed-dried crumbled meats. Gardialy work the size of the chunks up to about 3/4-inch cubes - then work on lenthening the cubes into longer strips. I like to continue to coat the chunks since raw food is not homogenous in texture in the wild, and you want to feed raw meaty bones/whole prey.
A wod abot egg shells, I prefer a course grind - you an let our brats chomp on them whole, but I find that the smaller, unground pieces just stick to the roofs of mouths, between the cheek and gums, and on the back of the toungue. This annoys all 4 of my kids, and they just end up gagging on them while eating. My kids would rather eat bone than whole or crushed chicken egg shell. ( they like the coase grind. )
FEEDING BY HAND - As always, sit in the floor for this. the large chunks and feeding by hand work well together. I like to cut the chicken into strips 3/4" x 2-4" (approximately). no need to worry about coating the food. You guessed it: tug-of-war. Tug of war is great. for several reasons...enriches hunting instinct, teaches ferrets to tear flesh with canines. After a bit of tug-of-war, stop tugging when your ferret has the meat in his mouth. Hopefully the ferret will position the strip so it's coming out of the ide of its mouth while you continue to hold ontto the other end. At this point, the ferret will start cutting the meat with his carnassial teeth - these are thos sharp jagged teeth on the sided of the jaw that are used for cutting fesh and bone. It's prety neat to watch that rapid scissor-like movement make short work of flesh cartilage, and bone.
Offer the strips by hand before you set down a fresh bowl of raw food. Also, shorten the strips and shrink the size of the pieces. Your ferrets will be accepting food from your hands in no time. AT the same time you're working with the strips, start to draw your ferrets up into your lap. If you keep working on this, you should be able to get your kids jumping into your lap to eat the treats.
Another thing to do is this... when your ferret has a chunk of food e's eating next tou you, try cupping his rump with your hand while he eats. this will also get your ferret used to being held whle he eats. then you caneventually tart holding your ferret in you lap with one hand and feeding with the other.
(Again, good for times of illness and recovery
Regarding being held... some ferrets are just like this, and 3 tends to be a magic number for being held. Once they hit 3, ferrets really start to enjoy being cuddled! But in the mean time, there are thngs you can do....
Get a soft carring sack that you wear in FRONT that can be strapped on up high near your chest. get the type that zips up with a mesh window the ferrets can look out of. Zip ONE ferret up in this sack, strap the sack to keep the ferret chest -level (to hear/feel your heart beat and body heat. Do whatever it is you were going to do - cleanhouse, watch TV, surf the web, etc.)
Also, carry your ferret aound the house - inside and outside and show him cool stuff while he's being held. Let him sinff the a flower while being held. let him siniff something inside the fridge wile being held, the trunk of thecar, a old radio that smells like lctronic, a lime, and onion, whatever....the key is to enrich your ferret while he i being held. SO, when he's picked up, he knows something good will happen - mabe even a piece of liver!!!
Since your kidsa are doing well you can offer a bit of organ meat, beef, etc. whatever. - justa s an enrichment/treat. Ferrets that are exposed to variety and enrichments at an early age will thrive on variation (not just food, but also activities) it's very healthy for stress reduction, so don't be afraid to offer new things. You'll have no trouble as long as your ferrets are free to fall back on the chicken, which is their main dit right now anyway.
Again, just let me know if you have quetion, and Jaycee, please continue to feel free to comment
I's great to see you newbies get so involved
And you're very helpful
-jennifer
