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Post by antismurffette on Dec 29, 2016 21:08:45 GMT -5
I now have all four on thickish soup!!! Eating small chunks is still hit or miss. I have separated out Jack and Tiny to see how much of their food they are actually eating during the day. Jezzy and Bill are in a kennel together. Soup is: Ground turkey, liver, gizzard, heart, and egg shells. Sometimes blended, sometimes small chunks of heat and liver with ground turkey and egg shells. I am wondering how you integrate other meats? Do I repalce some of the ground turkey with ground beef? Do I wait until they are accepting chunks? I do not want them to be on just the chicken/turkey for too long. Any recommendations? With mine, the boys only needed to be scuffed and stuff with small slivers once and after that they where happy. My girl, I'd stuffed her a couple times and she'd stare at me like I tried to posion her. She switched over once I stopped the soups though. She just took a little tough love. I don't think she likes chewing. She doesn't even go after shoes or other rubbers like the boys do. Anyway when they where eating chunks of chicken I just started giving them chunks of new meats starting with ones most chicken like (quail) and they didn't have any problems. I think the general advice is to puree, rub on gums until they eat it willingly, slivers, scruff and stuff until they take it from you or off a plate willingly then move to larger chunks.
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Post by kattadragon on Dec 30, 2016 1:41:57 GMT -5
I'm not sure I understand. The soup consists of approx. 1 ounce heart chicken, 1 ounce liver chicken, 1 ounce gizzard, 1 tsp bone meal (poops are still firming up), 4 ounces thy chicken, about 4 ounces ground turkey.
I try to alternate between putting all of that in a blender and chopping it all up. They always eat all of it when I blend it, but the chopping meals are not going well.They will usually eat the heart and ground turkey if I give it to them in chopped form, but leave the thy and half the liver.
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Post by antismurffette on Dec 30, 2016 5:29:26 GMT -5
I'm not sure I understand. The soup consists of approx. 1 ounce heart chicken, 1 ounce liver chicken, 1 ounce gizzard, 1 tsp bone meal (poops are still firming up), 4 ounces thy chicken, about 4 ounces ground turkey. I try to alternate between putting all of that in a blender and chopping it all up. They always eat all of it when I blend it, but the chopping meals are not going well.They will usually eat the heart and ground turkey if I give it to them in chopped form, but leave the thy and half the liver. From what I read they often just don't like liver. You could try mixing it with salmon oil or an egg. It might encourage them to eat it.
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Post by Aftershock on Dec 31, 2016 12:44:16 GMT -5
O.o your blender blends gizzards? I always hear of them destroying blenders. How much are they eating per meal?
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Post by kattadragon on Jan 1, 2017 15:19:39 GMT -5
combined, 11 ounces plus the water for blending.
I have to chop up the gizzards, the blender can't seem to blend them.
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Post by Aftershock on Jan 1, 2017 15:25:24 GMT -5
Do you have chicken thigh available? I'd try making soup, then chopping some thigh pieces about pinky nail sized and doing a 1/4 of a meal with chicken thigh pieces. So about 2.5 of thigh pieces, and the rest of their meal weight in soup. The idea is to either up the size of the pieces offered while still offering soup, or increasing piece amount while decreasing the amount of soup. 🙂 make sense?
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Post by kattadragon on Jan 2, 2017 19:34:32 GMT -5
Yes. The liver thing was a huge help. So, I can't spell, the "thy" is thigh. So I gave them chopped heart, chopped thigh, and ground turkey, they ate all of it!!! If I blend the liver with the ground turkey and chop up a thigh and heart and gizzard that should work. That will be dinner. I will post tomorrow how it goes.
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Post by kattadragon on Jan 3, 2017 21:00:26 GMT -5
I did not realize that using a different brand of ground turkey would be as big of a thing for the ferrets as it has been. They are eating skepticly, I did not even realize that could be a thing. But I blended it up, and they are eating it.
Bill was dropped off at the vet tonight for a teeth cleaning tomorrow.
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Post by Aftershock on Jan 4, 2017 11:02:39 GMT -5
Oh yeah, any little change and they know it. I like to praise them to high heaven when they eat things like that and you know they are iffy about it. Definitely make sure you get them accepting the soup with liver (don't want any deficiencies) even if you have to sit and finger feed some of it or spoon feed (mine prefered spoon). Or even making a batch with liver and one without, then mixing half and half. I hope I'm not confusing you!
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Post by kattadragon on Jan 4, 2017 11:52:14 GMT -5
Not confusing. They get the liver, 2 ounces everyday. I am going to try making a soup only for dinner with 2 ounces of liver (and all the normal stuff for soup), and a breakfast of chopped heart, thigh, bone meal, and ground turkey. This should go better now that they know the new turkey is not poison!!
I get Bill back from the vet tonight. It is a good thing I already got him on soup, I figure his mouth will be a bit sore.
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Post by Aftershock on Jan 4, 2017 11:55:53 GMT -5
X.x oh my gosh, I'm sorry, I got a bit confused and thought you weren't feeding liver because they stuck their noses up at it. Have you tried upping the size of pieces at all? I bet he will be so happy to be home!
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Post by kattadragon on Jan 4, 2017 12:07:43 GMT -5
Not yet. I have been easing off the amount of water I use in their soup to make it a bit thicker, but I keep the pieces about pinky nail sized. When we first started the soup Tiny dove right in, but the boys took some convincing. Than Tiny was jealous that I was spoon feeding the boys and started refusing to eat out of the bowl!! Who ever said ferrets do not have personality was not paying attention!
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Post by Aftershock on Jan 4, 2017 12:39:08 GMT -5
baby steps are great! X.x I've had that before. We got my female Cow and I had to feed her for three days (I thought since she was a baby, she would take to raw super easy) and my boy Gator was soooooo mad at me. He thought I was feeding her something different, so he'd scramble to get into my lap and totally freak out. Then he would crawl into my pant leg and pout. 😂😂😂 For sure! I love how all of them are all so different❤
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Post by kattadragon on Jan 4, 2017 19:12:08 GMT -5
I got a call from the vet. Bill is loosing a right top molar, and an incisor. Probly will have a soft mouth for a bit.
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Post by Aftershock on Jan 4, 2017 20:17:34 GMT -5
Ouchies! Were they gonna take out the other one on the same side as well? If an incisor has to be taken, it's best to take out the corresponding one as well so it doesn't sink into the gums/cheek.
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