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Post by colorguarder08 on Sept 13, 2020 10:53:20 GMT -5
So I have been having difficulty getting my hands on the "other organs" for their raw diet. When I am able to get them I have to pay 4-10x the cost of the organs in shipping alone. One month I did balanced grinds spent $75 on the grinds and $300 for the shipping. Went to order some spleens today and the total cost for them was $15 the cost for JUST SHIPPING was $140 I canceled my order. Shopped around and went rediscovered a whole prey site I was originally going to order a different protein for each day of the week but that didn't work out in my budget right now so they just have 4 proteins which is plenty. So as soon as I get those in I will be switching my guys to whole prey. Any suggestions?
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Post by Charlie on Sept 13, 2020 14:51:29 GMT -5
Which whole prey are you using? I like the idea of doing all whole prey as well but it's hard getting them and the cost is quite expensive. Like what you are experiencing with shipping. It also depends on where you live too. I know people in the UK have working ferrets so many of the foods they hunt, they eat. But here in Canada we don't do that so finding whole prey is difficult and expensive. So I have a combination of frankenprey and whole prey.
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Post by colorguarder08 on Sept 13, 2020 14:54:30 GMT -5
I ordered through rodentpro.com. I am getting large mice, gerbils, quail, and chicken. I have ordered enough so that each ferret gets 1 whole body of prey a day.
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Post by Charlie on Sept 13, 2020 16:03:53 GMT -5
I ordered through rodentpro.com. I am getting large mice, gerbils, quail, and chicken. I have ordered enough so that each ferret gets 1 whole body of prey a day. Does your quail and chickens still have all the feathers? Unfortunately the mice I'm getting are expensive. The guy I use to get them from was well worth it but he had to close his shop. The guy I'm getting it from now is double the price. I tried ordering from another guy but he wasn't getting back to me and my friend said he wasn't that expensive. I did talk to him once but he said he wasn't breeding many mice and mostly dealing with rats for his snakes and snake friends. lol |
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Post by colorguarder08 on Sept 13, 2020 18:03:27 GMT -5
I'm not sure but even if I have to defeather them it's still a much better deal than mypetcarnivore.com
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Post by colorguarder08 on Sept 13, 2020 18:09:07 GMT -5
I guess I was wrong about what I ordered. I got them 5 protein sources. Gerbils, Quail, Hamsters, Extra large Mice and Medium rats.
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Post by Charlie on Sept 13, 2020 19:48:27 GMT -5
That's awesome!!!
What you will want to do is weigh the whole prey to make sure they are getting enough food just like when feeding frankenprey. For example, Charlie usually eats around 2oz at each meal, morning and night. So I make sure the whole prey I give him is at least 2 oz or more. So he usually gets 2 large adult mice at 1 meal.
Your gerbils might be small so you may have to give 1 ferret 2.
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Post by colorguarder08 on Sept 14, 2020 13:54:27 GMT -5
That is something I didn't think about but I am hoping some of the larger prey items (rats and quail) will help balance out the needs. If not I do have meats still bought specifically for the ferrets so like chicken hind quarters, chicken hearts, gizzards etc..
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Post by abbeytheferret6 on Sept 15, 2020 8:31:22 GMT -5
I feed my boy 2 adult mice for breakfast. they are gutted tho--he comes back and eats the second one maybe an hour or two later.
Where do you get hamsters and gerbils---are you raising them?
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Post by colorguarder08 on Sept 16, 2020 20:26:12 GMT -5
No I'm still working on convincing my husband to let me raise the prey. I ordered all the prey from rodentpro.com they are primarily for feeding snakes but obviously it doesn't matter. They humanely euthanize the prey animals with co2
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Post by Charlie on Sept 16, 2020 21:53:39 GMT -5
I feed my boy 2 adult mice for breakfast. they are gutted tho--he comes back and eats the second one maybe an hour or two later. Where do you get hamsters and gerbils---are you raising them? My ferret gets 2 large adult mice at each meal too. I feed him mice 3 times a week because I find it helps to keep his stool better formed. |
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Post by Charlie on Sept 16, 2020 21:57:33 GMT -5
No I'm still working on convincing my husband to let me raise the prey. I ordered all the prey from rodentpro.com they are primarily for feeding snakes but obviously it doesn't matter. They humanely euthanize the prey animals with co2 I've thought about breeding mice myself but I had watched a snake breeder who did this and he said that mice smell more then rats. I don't know about the other animals. Plus more feeding and cleaning. LOL Plus then you also have to euthanize them. |
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Post by abbeytheferret6 on Sept 17, 2020 4:02:58 GMT -5
Oh yeah, it is something else. I raised ASf rats--- oh boy what a job. I got a female and male left and will not get overwhelmed like before. I had about 6 sterilite bins and my ratties had huge litters---like 15-17 babies. I fed them an organic mix of grains which can get expensive if you have a lot of rats. All that bedding to purchase too. hubbie helped me and bought some leather gloves cause when they bite, they can bring the blood. It will about make you cry all the cleaning on top of taking care of dogs and ferrets. He euthanized mine early, early in the morning before I got up. He made a co2 contraption from instructions off of you tube. It works great. I plan to keep only one grow out bin---and that is it.
Mice helps my ferrets too with making good stools.
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Post by Charlie on Sept 18, 2020 21:42:41 GMT -5
Oh yeah, it is something else. I raised ASf rats--- oh boy what a job. I got a female and male left and will not get overwhelmed like before. I had about 6 sterilite bins and my ratties had huge litters---like 15-17 babies. I fed them an organic mix of grains which can get expensive if you have a lot of rats. All that bedding to purchase too. hubbie helped me and bought some leather gloves cause when they bite, they can bring the blood. It will about make you cry all the cleaning on top of taking care of dogs and ferrets. He euthanized mine early, early in the morning before I got up. He made a co2 contraption from instructions off of you tube. It works great. I plan to keep only one grow out bin---and that is it. Mice helps my ferrets too with making good stools. I can't bring myself to feeding rats to my ferret since I use to have pet rats. I have never been bitten by my rats. LOL I'm sure they hurt like ferret bites too. lol |
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Post by colorguarder08 on Sept 19, 2020 0:43:12 GMT -5
Thanks to Covid my work schedule has been super crazy and unpredictable since the end of March. Lately that has been affecting my sleep. So today I got up about an hour before having to leave for work. The rodents arrived yesterday before work so I left out 6 gerbils to thaw. This morning I put 3 gerbils in a food dish (couldn't find my food scale to weigh them) and was honestly expecting it to still be there when I got home as they are both over 6 months so I was expecting them reject the gerbils. Kona had zero hesitations. By the time I finished feeding the other animals Kona had ate 2.5 gerbils so I put the other 3 in the cage for them and took out a package of rats for them. By the time I got ready to leave DiNozzo had started trying them. I will be putting 2 Rats in the food dishes for them tonight when I get home and we will see how that goes.
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