This may help, copy and pasted from an awesome mentor who is so great at explaining things,
gfountain hope you don't mind that I took this.
Now, moving on to the basic frankenprey menu:
Raw fed ferrets are generally fed twice a day, 12 hours apart, making a total of 14 meals per week. The basic weekly menu should include:
1 ½ meals of heart (~10% of the total diet)
1 ½ meals of organ, at least half of which must be liver (~5% liver, 5% other organ)
7-9 meals of edible bone-in meat (~50-60%)
2-4 meals of muscle meat with no bone (~15-30%)
and a sample menu to go by-
Sun AM: organ meal (½ liver, ½ other organ)
Sun PM: edible bone-in meat
Mon AM: edible bone-in meat (or muscle)
Mon PM: edible bone-in meat
Tues AM: heart
Tues PM: edible bone-in meat
Wed AM: muscle meat
Wed PM: edible bone-in meat
Thur AM: heart and organ (½ liver, ½ other organ)
Thur PM: edible bone-in meat
Fri AM: edible bone-in meat (or muscle)
Fri PM: edible bone-in meat
Sat AM: muscle meat
Sat PM: edible bone-in meat
and some other parts I picked through-
Raw meat is safe for ferrets to eat. A ferret’s digestive tract is very short and bacteria doesn’t have enough time to set up camp in there. And, surprisingly, raw food can be safely left out for several hours at a time, depending on the ambient temperature:
“Soups” - 6-8 hours (for soup recipe, see below)
Grinds - 8-12 hours
Chunks - 10-24 hours depending on the size (larger chunks last longer)
Bone-in meats - 12-24 hours, again depending on the size
Whole prey - up to 48 hours
EDIT/ADD: Raw soup recipe
8 oz raw skinless/boneless chicken
1 oz raw chicken liver (about half a liver)
1 oz raw chicken heart (about 2 hearts)
½ tsp. eggshell powder
Water to thin
Blend all ingredients until soupy. Freeze in ice cube trays (rubbed with olive oil for easy removal) to make easy-to-serve portions and reduce waste. Chicken is the most common protein to start a switch with, but any protein can be used.
Ferrets, whether they are fed whole prey, grinds, or frankenprey, or some combination of the three, must have a minimum of 3 DIFFERENT PROTEINS in their diet, preferably including at least one red meat. Examples of different proteins are chicken, turkey, quail, beef, rabbit, pork, venison, lamb, goat, frog, fish, etc. Some common red meats are beef, bison, venison, goat, and lamb.
And speaking of poop, poop patrol is going to become a fact of your life. A raw fed ferret’s poop is NOTHING like a kibble poop. Their poops change from meal to meal depending on what they last ate. Here is a link to the ‘poop chart’ for reference. (poop chart) You will likely become a little (or a lot) obsessed with your fuzzy’s litter box for the next few weeks at least, and very likely you will soon be able to tell what your ferret ate for dinner just by looking in the litter box. (You can brag about this talent to your friends if you want, lol.) In addition to his activity level, a ferret’s output is the best indicator of his health. It is also how we determine if your fuzzy needs more or less bone in his diet. As mentioned earlier, the diet should include 10-15% bone. Sometimes they need a little more bone, sometimes a little less, depending on the poops. If the poops are loose, they need more bone. If the fuzzy is constipated, or poops look dry and hard or chalky, they need less bone. Blood-rich meats (hearts, organs) will cause dark, looser poops; heavy bone meals (like chicken necks) will cause drier, more formed poops that often have tiny bits of partially digested bone in them. Another thing to expect during the first few weeks is STINKY poops! Your ferret is basically on a detox from the nasty things that are in kibble. While his digestive tract gets used to processing the raw, his stools will be stinky and odd looking most days. This will all clear up and you will have smaller, less stinky raw poops before you know it!
-thank you Gina for writing all that info, I go back and read through this from time to time.