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Post by ferretbrah on Oct 26, 2014 15:00:40 GMT -5
Can anyone help me with a meal plan and what to do in regard to reducing liver or heart, etc?
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Post by ferretbrah on Oct 27, 2014 10:47:14 GMT -5
10/26
Morning: Chicken grind
0.9oz each
Evening:
Fdr turkey 0.7 each
Overnight: fdr chicken Brooklyn : 0.3oz Harry: 0.5oz
Total: 1.9oz Brooklyn (1.0oz fdr, 0.9oz raw)
Harry: 2.1oz (1.2oz fdr, 0.9oz raw)
I'm going to try and do a draft of a meal plan later today, and to portion as much as possible after the hare-today thaws.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 27, 2014 18:51:23 GMT -5
You now have three different types of food, correct? FDR/raw soup/grinds is that correct? The FDR and the grinds are complete. That means they already have the organs in them. On Frankenprey, which is just raw, they get ten percent of their weekly intake from Organs. They should get ten percent of their weekly intake from Heart. While you are mixing FDR and grinds and raw, you want to subtract the FDR and GRinds from their weekly meals and only use ten percent Heart and ten percent Organ on their RAW (frankenprey) portion of the weekly meals. Does this make sense? I'm going to tag gfountain and mjbez, for some help with the Math. The average boy eats 3-4 oz a day, the average girl eats 2oz. If Brooklyn and Harry are finishing their meals, give them a little more. You will know they are full, when they leave some in their plate. I also noticed that you haven't had alot of Mentors pop in. I'm going to keep an eye out for you and keep you bumped up top. I used FDR as a transition to raw also. One trick is to take a small piece or two and let it sit in water. Then when you are offering a new protein, use the gravy that the FDR made and pour a little over the raw slivers. With the raw proteins, your goal is to get them eating the soup and adding slivers. You will be reducing the soup and adding more slivers, a little more each time. Mine aren't big on always eating heart pieces either. I usually do my Liver plus another organ plus half meal of Heart as a soupie with some small slivers. It's a good idea to keep them use to having soupie. If someone gets sick, then soupie is a good way to nourish them. As you know with finicky ferrets, if they are use to eating soup then they will eat soup when they are sick. We all know how good soup tastes, when we don't feel well. Also, did you portion out and freeze the Hearts and Livers? You have two pounds of each and that will hold you for quite awhile. One small note: You have a nice variety of proteins. It would also be good to have a red meat in once a week. Red meat is high in Vitamin B and Iron. I wrote down what you bought and give me a little time to think of how to do this. I'll get back to you by Wednesday. We're in Nashville tomorrow and I need to do a little reading about Grinds.
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Post by ferretbrah on Oct 27, 2014 19:41:24 GMT -5
^Thanks!
I was just planning on using the order from hare-today to make their weekly menu. I didn't realize that the grinds would be a complete meal by itself, so I would not need to add liver or heart to those meals.
I guess my thinking on adding the heart / liver ontop of the grind was that you can't be 100% sure that the grind portion they ate on 'x' day had grinded liver or heart.
As for adding the liver and heart on frankenprey, that makes sense but I would probably only be able to get chicken thigh , drumstick , breasts, and wings for the near future due to ease of sourcing them. I was just planning on stopping the actual full pieces of meat (drumstick, thigh, breast) since I was getting the grinds but I could add some frankenprey like that back in if needed since it is cheap and easy to get.
I am thawing out the order now. I guess I will just package the liver / hearts in containers for the freezer instead of putting them portioned out with each grind. That will make prep a lot easier!
For a red meat, is ground chuck beef ok? Just buy a pack at the grocery store and portion it out? I was just worried about red meat and beef since a lot of ferrets seem to be allergic to it (likely due to all of the added hormones). If I did beef I feel I would need to find some grass fed or something with none of the bad stuff added.
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Post by gfountain on Oct 27, 2014 21:47:47 GMT -5
Oh wow.. you did get skipped over, didn’t you? I’m sorry about that! I didn't read everything thoroughly, just skimmed through the thread and I see that you're needing help with your menu. I read early on in the thread that you want to feed frankenprey, but then later that you bought a lot of grinds. So have you decided to go with grinds now instead of frankenprey? Your statement above "...you can't be 100% sure that the grind portion they ate on 'x' day had grinded liver or heart" is exactly my biggest complaint with commercial grinds. I'm not too familiar with grinds but I know that they aren't always completely balanced which creates confusion in my mind. Do you know what the percentages are in your grinds? I THINK HareToday's are 80% meat, 10% bone, 10% organ. The problem is you don't know exactly which organs you're getting. I've seen some grind companies that include heart in their organ percentage, and some have separate meat/heart grinds. It would be helpful to know what organs are included and you may need to email the company to find that out. So, with what you have.. I would put the liver aside for the future, at least until you find out what the organ content is in the grinds. The hearts I would go ahead and use. You CAN overdose on the liver; you CAN'T overdose on the hearts. I would do 1 or 2 heart meals per week, at least 2 bone-in meals of necks or wings or whatever else you want, and finish off with the grinds. This MIGHT result in too little organ in which case you could either feed an entire liver meal once in a while, or add a little extra liver to the grinds, but I'm not sure about that. Like @poncesmom, I'll need some time to do a little research before giving you a definite recommendation. But don't worry, diet deficiencies don't show up for a while, so we have time to figure this out. And now that you're on our radar, we won't let you get lost again.
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Post by gfountain on Oct 27, 2014 21:52:46 GMT -5
I missed the red meat question. Any kind of red meat is fine. My kids absolutely love beef. I usually get stew meat for them because it's already cut up, but ground is fine also.
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Post by ferretbrah on Oct 28, 2014 12:00:34 GMT -5
^yeah. After looking at hare-today, I decided it was probably best to go that route vs 100% Frankenprey. I'm open to doing a menu plan with all of the hare-today order and Frankenprey.
I emailed hare-today with questions about their percentage content and what is included in the organs.
The main thing I noticed after a few days of feeding the liver/heart added into the chicken grind was brooklyn's poop was about 1/3 tarry a couple times, so I assume the grind does have liver already in it.
I'll look into stew meat, as it seems it is perfectly cut for them.
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Post by gfountain on Oct 28, 2014 12:52:05 GMT -5
One other thing to note, if you're feeding commercial grinds, you will HAVE to brush teeth unless you feed enough bone-in meals to take care of them.
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Post by ferretbrah on Oct 28, 2014 14:11:09 GMT -5
^ im figuring that out now haha. Their teeth are starting to get yellowish. Is there a good video somewhere on how to brush their teeth? Last time I tried they both freaked out and harry even pee'd hinself he was shaking so bad. I've tried meat flavored and mint. Both flavors they hate.
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Post by gfountain on Oct 28, 2014 14:51:36 GMT -5
I'm sorry, I can't help with tooth brushing but if you're on FB, someone just recently posted a video about it. Here is the link.
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Post by ferretbrah on Oct 28, 2014 15:24:56 GMT -5
I just applied to join the page. Good to know the forum has one to get more awareness!
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Post by gfountain on Oct 28, 2014 15:30:32 GMT -5
What is your FB name? I can let you in.
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Post by ferretbrah on Oct 28, 2014 18:55:20 GMT -5
What is your FB name? I can let you in. Michael O'B
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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2014 19:06:08 GMT -5
Thanks, gfountain. Like Gina said, we're both going to have to get a little familiar with Grinds. As for teeth brushing, I went thru alot of Threads and what I found from conversations with Sherry and Heather (on the old forum) was to make a paste of eggshell powder and a little oil. Take some gauze and rub their teeth. No, they won't like it, but if it becomes a familiar routine, Harry shouldn't be quite so frightened. Gizzards are also a good way to clean teeth, after you get their teeth and gums in good shape. As for beef, look for fatty cuts and you already know to find non enhanced meats. Mine aren't crazy about beef, so I use ground beef or fatty stew meats and then whip up a raw egg (which they love) and pour it over the top. They will eat this, even though it's not a favorite meal. Lamb is another red meat, but it can be expensive. I'm just getting home and catching up, I'll do some more research and get back to you. :wave2:
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Post by ferretbrah on Oct 28, 2014 19:15:43 GMT -5
Thank you. I'll have to try that for their teeth; I didn't even think about the gizzards either.
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