Post by Sherry on Jul 15, 2012 9:06:19 GMT -5
I know a number of people who are looking to switch their ferrets aren't sure what to expect, or how to go about it. I wrote this up for Raw Instincts Magazine and thought I'd share it here.
Raw Switch
By Sherry Stone
Originally published in Raw Instincts Magazine
Four years ago, when I first “got into” ferrets, one of our little ones (Boris) consistently had some very strange stools. We had specimens done time after time, checking for parasites, bacterial infections, etc. Nothing was ever found, so I started looking into diet. It turned out he had sensitivity to chicken, which is in most kibbles used for ferrets. I began checking into alternative diet options and discovered a raw diet for them, which in turn led me to the original Holistic Ferret Forum.
I made the decision to start “the switch”. Since ferrets strongly imprint on their food, they quite literally don’t recognize any food they are unaccustomed to as edible. Which can make for a lengthy process in trying to change their minds! Nor is it advisable to do a “cold switch” by withholding food until the ferret gets hungry enough to eat. If you don’t know their background you may find out the hard way that your ferret had started to develop insulinoma(pancreatic tumors causing low blood sugar) as being without food for too long can precipitate the onset of that disease. This disease is one of the things we are trying to delay, or hopefully avoid entirely by feeding a more species appropriate diet. Ferrets, like cats, can also develop hepatic lipidosis, or fatty liver disease if they go too long without eating. So you have to “convince” them that this stuff actually is food.
Transitioning them to a raw diet meant I was stacking the odds in their favour of not developing those tumors, and increased the possibility of Boris being healthy. Not definite by any means, but a better chance. Since the protein in raw is much more easily digested, the nutrients are absorbed better, it gives their immune system a real boost.
Generally a good rule of thumb for a balanced diet for ferrets in a weekly menu would be 8-9 meals of consumable bone(any bone small enough for them to eat), 4-5 meals of muscle meats one of which must be heart for the taurine, and a meal of liver and another organ. Getting them to eat all of that can be another story entirely.
There were times I was so frustrated with Boris and his reluctance to try anything new, combined with the fact that if he’s not had a particular meat in a regular menu rotation, he no longer “recognizes” it and refuses to eat. He will quite willingly starve himself instead. I will admit- had I not had a mentor, I may just have given up a couple of weeks into it. She had me try him with a variety of change, including introducing different scents, places, and textures. This was to accustom him to some changes in his environment which would hopefully help him to accept a change in his diet. She also became my sounding board for everything.
While three of my four ferrets seemed interested in trying tidbits of meat coated in crumbled up kibble, Boris wasn’t. At all. That meant the best route to take was a raw soup to get them all used to the taste of meat. I’d remembered reading during my research that if you can get them to taste meat often enough, they will develop a taste for meat. With this in mind, off we went.
To switch a ferret using the soup method, you need approximately 8 oz raw meat, 2 oz liver, an ounce of heart and ½ tsp eggshell powder. Puree this all up with enough water to make it the desired consistency. This is a basically balanced meal for the time it takes to start them on a properly balanced diet. While they’d be out playing, I would grab a ferret, dab some on the end of their nose so they’d have to lick it off, thus tasting it. Over, and over, and over again. While Vincent, Sinnead and Lucrezia decided this stuff wasn’t too bad, Boris was my little drama queen. He would spit, gag, retch, and twist, basically anything to prevent me from dabbing his nose with it. Ultimately, he started licking some from a finger tip willingly. Another several days of this and he took some raw soup from a spoon while sitting on my
lap.
Three or four weeks of hand feeding later, I was finally able to persuade him to join his cage mates in having his soup from a dish, with me sitting on the floor with my hand on his back to prevent him from bolting and looking for his kibble to fill his stomach. Success! The puree soup was followed by a thicker puree(less water), then to a wet ground consistency. At this point, we were finally able to ditch the kibble entirely. This entire process took just over 6 weeks. We were now off to the proverbial races!
One day, he was being particularly stubborn about eating his ground mush, so I sat him on my lap to feed him. I had some slivers of pork on the side of the plate so I could give some tidbits to the others. He sniffed them, grabbed one, hopped down and ate it! All on his own. I hand fed more slivers of meat to all of them, Boris included. We moved from that solid starting point on to larger chunks of meat, and then bones. I chose to use Cornish hen because of Boris’ sensitivity to chicken. It appeared to be just different enough.
Starting with just the wings and ribs, I chopped them up fairly small to begin with and slowly increased the size over time. From there to more variety in proteins, and to straight heart meals as well as the dreaded liver and organs. For a year, I hand fed a puree liver soup flavoured with about one teaspoon of heavy cream once a week, just to get their organ meats into them. After that length of time, they finally accepted liver and other organs sliced up.
Since then, I’ve transitioned 6 other ferrets to a fully raw/whole prey diet. But none have given me half the trouble Boris did!
Raw Switch
By Sherry Stone
Originally published in Raw Instincts Magazine
Four years ago, when I first “got into” ferrets, one of our little ones (Boris) consistently had some very strange stools. We had specimens done time after time, checking for parasites, bacterial infections, etc. Nothing was ever found, so I started looking into diet. It turned out he had sensitivity to chicken, which is in most kibbles used for ferrets. I began checking into alternative diet options and discovered a raw diet for them, which in turn led me to the original Holistic Ferret Forum.
I made the decision to start “the switch”. Since ferrets strongly imprint on their food, they quite literally don’t recognize any food they are unaccustomed to as edible. Which can make for a lengthy process in trying to change their minds! Nor is it advisable to do a “cold switch” by withholding food until the ferret gets hungry enough to eat. If you don’t know their background you may find out the hard way that your ferret had started to develop insulinoma(pancreatic tumors causing low blood sugar) as being without food for too long can precipitate the onset of that disease. This disease is one of the things we are trying to delay, or hopefully avoid entirely by feeding a more species appropriate diet. Ferrets, like cats, can also develop hepatic lipidosis, or fatty liver disease if they go too long without eating. So you have to “convince” them that this stuff actually is food.
Transitioning them to a raw diet meant I was stacking the odds in their favour of not developing those tumors, and increased the possibility of Boris being healthy. Not definite by any means, but a better chance. Since the protein in raw is much more easily digested, the nutrients are absorbed better, it gives their immune system a real boost.
Generally a good rule of thumb for a balanced diet for ferrets in a weekly menu would be 8-9 meals of consumable bone(any bone small enough for them to eat), 4-5 meals of muscle meats one of which must be heart for the taurine, and a meal of liver and another organ. Getting them to eat all of that can be another story entirely.
There were times I was so frustrated with Boris and his reluctance to try anything new, combined with the fact that if he’s not had a particular meat in a regular menu rotation, he no longer “recognizes” it and refuses to eat. He will quite willingly starve himself instead. I will admit- had I not had a mentor, I may just have given up a couple of weeks into it. She had me try him with a variety of change, including introducing different scents, places, and textures. This was to accustom him to some changes in his environment which would hopefully help him to accept a change in his diet. She also became my sounding board for everything.
While three of my four ferrets seemed interested in trying tidbits of meat coated in crumbled up kibble, Boris wasn’t. At all. That meant the best route to take was a raw soup to get them all used to the taste of meat. I’d remembered reading during my research that if you can get them to taste meat often enough, they will develop a taste for meat. With this in mind, off we went.
To switch a ferret using the soup method, you need approximately 8 oz raw meat, 2 oz liver, an ounce of heart and ½ tsp eggshell powder. Puree this all up with enough water to make it the desired consistency. This is a basically balanced meal for the time it takes to start them on a properly balanced diet. While they’d be out playing, I would grab a ferret, dab some on the end of their nose so they’d have to lick it off, thus tasting it. Over, and over, and over again. While Vincent, Sinnead and Lucrezia decided this stuff wasn’t too bad, Boris was my little drama queen. He would spit, gag, retch, and twist, basically anything to prevent me from dabbing his nose with it. Ultimately, he started licking some from a finger tip willingly. Another several days of this and he took some raw soup from a spoon while sitting on my
lap.
Three or four weeks of hand feeding later, I was finally able to persuade him to join his cage mates in having his soup from a dish, with me sitting on the floor with my hand on his back to prevent him from bolting and looking for his kibble to fill his stomach. Success! The puree soup was followed by a thicker puree(less water), then to a wet ground consistency. At this point, we were finally able to ditch the kibble entirely. This entire process took just over 6 weeks. We were now off to the proverbial races!
One day, he was being particularly stubborn about eating his ground mush, so I sat him on my lap to feed him. I had some slivers of pork on the side of the plate so I could give some tidbits to the others. He sniffed them, grabbed one, hopped down and ate it! All on his own. I hand fed more slivers of meat to all of them, Boris included. We moved from that solid starting point on to larger chunks of meat, and then bones. I chose to use Cornish hen because of Boris’ sensitivity to chicken. It appeared to be just different enough.
Starting with just the wings and ribs, I chopped them up fairly small to begin with and slowly increased the size over time. From there to more variety in proteins, and to straight heart meals as well as the dreaded liver and organs. For a year, I hand fed a puree liver soup flavoured with about one teaspoon of heavy cream once a week, just to get their organ meats into them. After that length of time, they finally accepted liver and other organs sliced up.
Since then, I’ve transitioned 6 other ferrets to a fully raw/whole prey diet. But none have given me half the trouble Boris did!
