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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2015 15:50:46 GMT -5
I'm curious about (and if a reasonable price, interested in switching if possible) freeze-dried raw Stella & Chewy's chick chick chicken Cat food, Canned premade raw Rad Cat raw chicken formula, and Premade raw Bravo! chicken Basic Cat Diet. But the GA is really low for protein. Is this because some are wet foods? Or these can't be given to ferrets because some have about 14% protein but around 67% moisture). I'm leaning more towards Bravo or Stella & Chewy's. What's the difference between premade and freeze-dried raw? Are commercial raw foods (especially these) usually more expensive than kibble? How much raw do you give to each ferret? Lastly, (sorry for so many questions in one thread) is supplementing with the Bravo! necessary? If yes, what products or oils are necessary or recommended? If you have any opinions or reviews on these foods, I would love to hear them and appreciate it.  |
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Post by lyles on Aug 7, 2015 17:13:13 GMT -5
Hello, there are lost of information here on starting your fuzzy on raw. If it's still a baby (> 4 months old), then you shouldn't have a problem switching straight to raw. I wouldn't feed them that, the protein content is way too low and those commercial foods are full of preservatives and other nasty stuff.  Just buy raw meat from your market (just make sure if the pork they sell and other meats doesn't have any added sodium). Here is a good quote on what a week plan looks like: They need a good variety, so at least 3 different meat sources (beef, chicken, pork, ect.) |
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Post by Celene on Aug 7, 2015 18:40:26 GMT -5
To answer your first question, you are correct about the reason for a huge difference in the GA - it is entirely due to water. I found a website here that will help you calculate the guaranteed analysis "on a dry matter basis" based on the moisture content. bitbyter wrote a fairly detailed overview on commercial grinds here. Commercial raw foods are significantly more expensive than kibble for several reasons: - They have much higher standards for food safety. With kibble, the "meat" can be sanitized at very high temperatures so they use old/potentially contaminated/rotting meat. With raw, the food has to be edible and good to begin with. In fact, many CGR (commercial ground raw) brands that I know of use human-grade meat, and many are even certified to human food-safe specifications. (A local company to me has recipes on their website for burgers, meatloaf and other meals that humans can cook for themselves with the CGR).
- They have a much higher percentage of meat. Anything worth feeding your ferret will have less than 5% non-meat ingredients. Not being able to bulk up the food with cheaper grains and veggies increases costs significantly.
- Cold storage is expensive! Facilities which make CGR require vast areas of storage space, compared to kibble which can be kept in a basic warehouse. Pet stores also need to purchase freezers and pay the electrical bill on them, so they need to increase the markup to pay for this. Freezers also take up a lot of room in their stores.
There are probably other reasons too. FDR (freeze-dried raw) doesn't need to be stored in a cooler/freezer, but the first two point are still valid (plus the freeze-dried technology might cost more, I don't know). My personal advice would be to stick to the frankenprey menu lyles posted above. personally feed CGR about every second week, because there is a company local to me that makes a good quality product in a variety of proteins. This allows me to include meats in their diet (such as wild boar, kangaroo, ostrich, venison, etc) which I wouldn't otherwise be able to do. I keep a bag of Stella & Chewys in the closet for emergencies (freezer dies or electricity goes out) or for the rare occasions I forget to their their meals beforehand. I made a chart which can help you balance commercial grinds and FDR into a frankenprey diet. I switched my girls to raw using CGR rather than the more common soup recipe we recommend. There are also many people who make their OWN grinds/mixes for much cheaper. One thing to keep in mind is to ALWAYS buy the CGR/FDR made for cats - the ones made for dogs do not have enough taurine, and generally have much higher levels of fillers/fruits/veggies in them. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2015 10:23:40 GMT -5
Thank you lyles. I think that would be a hassle with buying and having to measure everything out so I was more interested in commercial, but thank you! The schedule is helpful.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2015 10:33:35 GMT -5
Thank you Celene. With the Bravo, do you need supplements? There's a puppy store and another store in my area that sells Stella and Chewy's. I don't know the prices though but looking into it. Do you know the companies that make the soups?
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Post by ferretbrah on Aug 8, 2015 10:59:55 GMT -5
Another commercial raw option I would take a look at is mypetcarnivore.com , hare-today.com , and rodentpro.com .
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Post by Celene on Aug 8, 2015 11:14:23 GMT -5
We do not recommend feeding commercial grinds long-term. Rather, they are mostly recommended to help switch ferrets to a full raw diet, or to help supplement frankenprey/whole prey diets. Reasons for this include that CGR/FDR does nothing to help clean teeth (you would need to brush 3 times per week which is NOT fun), and it also does not maintain neck and jaw strength since they are not really chewing anything. Ferrets can also gain a lot of weight because mush doesn't require much effort to eat so it's easy for a ferret to overdo it (think how easy it is for a human to down a 1000-calorie milkshake!) In the same way it would be bad to feed a healthy, adult human on a diet of liquid and mush, the same goes for ferrets. This is the general route people use soupies/grinds to transition to a full raw diet:  The soupie recipe we use to help transition ferrets to raw is as follows: 8oz raw chicken thigh (raw) 1 oz raw chicken liver (or other raw liver) 1-2 raw chicken hearts (approximately 1 oz) or 1 oz other raw heart ½ to ¾ tsp bone meal or crushed egg shell (air-dry egg shell then crush with mortar and pestle or in a clean coffee grinder) Weigh out your meat and organs. Add bone meal or egg shell. Add water until about the consistency of thick cream (no thinner!!). Blending up in a food processor is the easiest. I would also not recommend feeding Bravo!, only because when I googled it just now, the first thing that came up was a huge recall from mid-July. I did notice their page also recommends adding supplements to the diet. Truthfully, if their product isn't balanced enough to provide complete nutrition in the first place, I wouldn't bother with it. |
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