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Post by Corvidophile on Sept 26, 2015 20:09:52 GMT -5
Winnipeg is slowly leaving more and more food behind and has started losing weight. I'm pretty sure it's because it smells rancid to him after a few hours, and here's why:
1. Frankly it smells rancid to ME after a few hours. 2. He'll always eat mice, even a day old (they've got the skin as protection with only a small amount of moist meat exposed that he's frequently, er, keeping a fresh edge on, haha) 3. He'll always eat fresh stuff right out of the fridge at any random time I present it to him 4. We were all recently displaced to my inlaw's house for five days when my neighbour (our houses share a wall) decided to refinish their floors and the stain and polyurethane came RIGHT through to us. My inlaw's house has always been annoyingly dry, I woke up with glue eyes and parched throat every morning. And Winnipeg's food- it never went rancid, it just dehydrated (like my face LOL) and he ate away at it all day long! I went to throw away leftovers when putting down new stuff several times and found that the piece I picked up to throw away was dry on the outside and smelled fine! His leftovers always smell sour at my house. 5. After we came back home when the floor fumes had cleared out, he's even more picky.
I'm not sure what I should do... I tried blanching a piece to kill external bacteria to increase its countdown to funkiness time and that seems to work. Is it alright nutritionally to blanch things? The insides are still raw, it's just the first few millimeters going in that are cooked. Is there an antibacterial solution I could dip the meat in? Should I maybe toast it at 150 to dehydrate the outside? I gotta be able to leave him food while we're at work and asleep and have him keep eating it past the first few hours of exposure.
I have a combo air conditioner/dehumidifier set up and running constantly in the room he's in, but apparently it's not working well enough. We have steam radiators and window aircons, my inlaw's have centralized heating and cooling, that's why there's such a disparity in humidity. I can't feed whole mice forever, they're too expensive to be an everyday thing for me.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2015 6:54:39 GMT -5
How much was Winnipeg eating before he started eating less and what exactly is his diet, other than whole prey? What exactly smells rancid? Excuse all my questions, I'm not up to date with if Winnipeg is transitioning to raw Usually its normal for ferrets to begin to eat less on raw, however the fact that Winnipeg is losing weight worries me. What season is it where you live? Ferrets lose or gain weight depending on the seasons. They gain in winter, and lose in summer or around those times. Apparently males can lose up to 30% of their body weight in summer. What type of meat did you try blanching? Ferrets can handle the bacteria, thats how their bodies are designed so you don't really have any need for blanching to kill external bacteria. Meat chunks can usually stay out for roughly 10-24 hours depending on the size. Bone in meats for roughly 12 to 24 hours depending on the size.The larger, the longer it can last. Whole prey can stay out for even up to 48 hours. Ferrets also won't eat or touch anything that has spoiled, so is there a chance that the meat has gone bad? It could always just be that its one of those days where's he's just not as hungry. Anyway, cooking diminishes nutritional value of the meat for ferrets, so its not recommended.
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Post by Corvidophile on Sept 27, 2015 8:00:06 GMT -5
Not offended, I don't expect people to keep detailed tabs on me! He eats frankenprey with interspersed meals of mice and egg once a week, the frankenprey is mostly poultry mix with some beef organs. He's been fully frankenprey for a few months now, maybe 4 months I think? He went straight from commercial ground to frankenprey without a peep, I gave him half ground, half frankenprey for I think a week or two just to give his jaws time to get stronger.
It's fall here in New Jersey, and his coat is shedding and changing facial pattern slightly.
He first started getting picky after I introduced the regular mice, which I thought was him stalling me out for more mice at first! It also coincided with an expected slow-down of consumption, he was both out of rapid growth stage at seven months old, and had been eating raw for a little over two months. He went from eating about 8 oz a day to 4 oz very rapidly, but he didn't lose weight then, and this was a stated normso I wasn't overly concerned and let it play out. it's slowly decreased further to between 1 oz and 3 oz, and he's started losing weight. At my inlaw's house, he ramped back up to 4-5 oz every day we were there, and when we came home again last week dropped to 1-2 oz. This has all been the same batch of food by the way.
The particular piece I blanched was from a Cornish game hen, it was a back/hip/tail area with skin, muscle, bone, and fat, I grabbed it on purpose because of the variety on it.
An update on the blanching experiment: it did what it was supposed to, of what's leftover this morning the cooked outside of the piece is still dry and doesn't smell, with a worked-on area exposing raw meat which doesn't smell either. This morning I tried another method: I took a bunch of peices and washed them under cold water in the sink rubbing with my hands, and then patted them dry. I'll see what they're like this evening.
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Post by Heather on Sept 27, 2015 17:50:20 GMT -5
I'm always concerned about blanching. Bone cooks faster than meat and the thought of feeding parcooked bone raises warning flags. 4 or 5 oz for a hob is a good amount. You mention frankenprey...whole meats? Is he treating all his whole meats in this manner? I've got a pair who will hold out for prey (they eat what they get too bad brats). Are they refusing ground meats? I know of a number of ferrets who refuse to eat ground meats....Nefarious and Beowulf refuse to eat ground meats...they like hit whole or prey. ciao
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Post by Corvidophile on Sept 27, 2015 20:01:08 GMT -5
4-5 oz is what he ate in frankenprey those five days at my inlaw's, the past week he hasn't finished more than 2 oz of frankenprey a day. He'll eat eggs and mice until he pops, but the frankenprey gets eaten right when I first put it down for a few minutes, and then he stashes it once sated and won't touch it. I thought he might be trying to ration and build up food storage for the winter so I tried just leaving his smelly old meat in the box instead of throwing it out after half a day, but what I ended up with is 36 hours worth of smelly meat stash, no increase in consumption.
Update on the washed and patted meat: he did eat more of it, so this too was partially successful, so it looks like I'm not gonna have to blanch it. Tonight's overnight meal I'm toasting the outside of at 150 until it dries out a bit- this should result in less cooking than blanching. I still have his commercial ground (Nature's Variety Instinct) in the freezer, gonna see if he'll eat that longer hours as my next step tomorrow morning.
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Post by Corvidophile on Sept 28, 2015 7:05:25 GMT -5
Update: this morning he had eaten ALL the toasted food overnight! I intended to toast it again this morning but I was running really late so I fried the outside in lard for a few seconds a side. I have to babysit the toaster practically the whole time because I have no experience drying the outside of different sizes of meat without accidentally baking it, but I can put on some clothes while a pan is heating up, and then the actual attended time is literal seconds. Bigger cleanup, but I left that 'til I get home.
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Post by Thérèse on Sept 28, 2015 7:30:55 GMT -5
I'm with Heather, my great concern would be the bones. Although others may disagree, my advice would be that you feed kibble (awful as that is) rather than cooked bones, no matter how lightly. While kibble does have serious negative effects on health I would hate to hear your wee one had suffered some internal injury because of a bone shard.
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Post by Sherry on Sept 28, 2015 10:40:21 GMT -5
I am also really hesitant as if the bone starts to heat inside it can cause major internal injuries. How about just putting less out and only feeding what he will eat in a sitting twice a day?
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Post by raynebc on Sept 28, 2015 12:47:03 GMT -5
When I feed my guys I usually add some hot tap water to the bottom of the plate to help warm/hydrate the food. It just might make it seem, to the ferrets, to make it fresher for longer.
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Post by Corvidophile on Sept 28, 2015 15:09:14 GMT -5
I'm scared about the bones too. I'm not gonna use an immersive cooking method again, the timing is too tricky, but frying it for two seconds a side really doesn't reach further than the immediate edge, if it's a fridge-cold large chunk with the bone in the center. I don't have to dry the outsides of every peice, just enough for him to eat while I'm gone. I can give him any peice with bones near the surface totally raw first thing in the morning, let him eat it while I get ready for work, and give him the remainder as I'm heading out the door to last until evening.
He'll always eat raw right when presented, so it's not like he no longer LIKES raw meat; he just somehow got it into his head that it's already bad when its just few hours old. I really don't know why! It obviously slowly crept into his head too, he didn't start this suddenly, it just got to the point where if he's waiting long enough for me to give him fresh food that he's getting thin that he's apparently very convinced it's not to be eaten after a certain horizon has passed that other people's ferrets obviously aren't normally minding, or I'd have read someone else stuck in the same situation. I think what I'm gonna do is fatten him up a bit again by doing whatever gets him to eat the most while I'm asleep or working (including more mice and eggs), then switch more peices of panfried meat with totally raw ones and hopefully his being used to eating more food again will get him to eat it?? What a pain he's being.
Sherry, I've been splitting it up into two to three servings a day already, and during days I'm home I keep giving him bits of food throughout the day.
Raynbec, excessive moisture I think is the problem though! In the lower humidity environment where the outside of the meat dried out, he ate it all day long and cleaned his plate.
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Post by Corvidophile on Sept 28, 2015 15:14:24 GMT -5
I was writing that thing so long that Abbey's suggestion wasn't even posted yet, but yes, I'm considering how to do that, too. Stick it on a grate in front of a fan? There was some Cooking Network show where jerky was made that way for fun. Not sure how much food dehydrators are, should research them, but I'm hoping this will be a short term enough problem not to buy an appliance.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2015 15:30:00 GMT -5
The two temperature fast dry method is to dehydrate first at the highest temperature setting, 145º F, for only the first two hours of dehydrating. This is because in the first few hours the temperature of the food will not exceed the critical 118º F temperature. - See more at: www.raw-food-diet-magazine.com/how-to-dehydrate-food.html#sthash.BCgzXLzX.dpufThe rest of the article talks about letting the food cook at 105 degrees until done which is not relevant to what u r talking about. yikes, they can be expensive! (dehydrators) If you do the fan method, let us know how how it is done---may come in handy some time.
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Post by Corvidophile on Sept 28, 2015 21:07:55 GMT -5
The two temperature fast dry method is to dehydrate first at the highest temperature setting, 145º F, for only the first two hours of dehydrating. This is because in the first few hours the temperature of the food will not exceed the critical 118º F temperature That seems like a really generic claim for these guys to make...? The food would have to be of uniform thickness and material for that to be true, wouldn't it? Stick something as lumpy as a drumstick in there and the exposed-on-all-sides, relatively dry knee bone will hit too high a temp to not shatter when bitten before the wetter, thicker muscle dries out much at all. Regarding fan jerky, check it out: www.popularmechanics.com/home/how-to/g1571/make-your-own-diy-box-fan-beef-jerky/? Here's the Food Network goofy video I remembered in the first place, less than four minutes and very neat. I prefer the setup method in the first, and you can also use some duct tape instead of a weight or bungee cords. www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/beef-jerky-recipe.html You'd have to stick this fan contraption FARRR out of ferrets reach though!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2015 22:05:55 GMT -5
Lol. No, I don't think that will work with a drumstick. Now that is a very adventurous way to make jerky! Certainly cheaper than buying a dehydrator.
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Post by RedSky on Sept 29, 2015 5:58:47 GMT -5
Would freeze dried raw be an option of overnight and while you are working? Or even just one or the other.
The other side of it is if he's healthy and young given time he may come to learn he needs to eat there and then or he will be hungry. Some people do feed two or three times a day, food down for x amount of time, food either all gone or taken out until next meal time. I'm not a supporter for this feeding with ferrets generally but could work for you.
Could he have his seasons backwards? Some loose weight for winter and gain weight for summer? Not sure if this is a possibility?
I'd hate to see him go back to kibble after a successful transition.
My two boys always come and eat from a fresh bowl of food. Even if it's the same stuff that is already down but a new bowl of it. Most of the time if they aren't that hungry they will have a few nibbles each then go back to whatever they were doing. But a fresh piece of meat is never ignored.
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