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Post by katt on Mar 12, 2011 15:56:55 GMT -5
Did Pixie decide to eat some? Yes she did eventually eat some. Question: If I take meat out to thaw, how long can it stay in my fridge before it's bad? A few days. I tell by the texture and odor of the meat. In my fridge, things on the top shelf often freeze, so the meat stays semi-frozen and will stay good for quite a while. Not as long as in the freezer, but longer than in a normal fridge, or he lower shelves. The colder your fridge, the longer it will stay good. I have also found that certain meats seem to "Expire" sooner than others. Organ meats for example seem to go bad before bone-in meats. When the meat starts to get slimey, or stinky I toss it. Also keep in mind that if it is truly "spoiled" they will almost Always NOT eat it. Unless they are starving. What I do is I have all of my food in pre-portioned baggies in the freezer. I alternate randomly between thawed and frozen. When feeding frozen I run the bag under warm water to unstick the bag from the meat, and just toss the frozen block of meats into the cage. They love to chase it around an gnaw on it, and then it stays fresh longer in their cage as it takes a while to thaw. When feed thawed, I take the food out of the freezer and move it to the fridge 1-3 days ahead of time. (If I put stuff on the top shelf it stays frozen, or takes a day or two to thaw so again it will stay good a little longer this way in my fridge). I find on the normal shelf, I usually won't leave meat in there more than say 3 days. Sometimes a little longer, but usually it is in there a day or two. Something to consider as well that just occurred to me. When you buy meat, say a thing of chicken wings, from the store the package should have a packaged on and a use by date. The time length between these it is assumed this meat is in the fridge. Food is often good in the fridge a little longer than the actual expiration date (though I honestly won't touch food that is expired even by one day haha). But this time between those two dates could be a good guideline. After a while you just really start to get a feel for what bad meat is and how long diff meats will last in different places of your home. haha
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2011 16:01:22 GMT -5
Thanks for the response!
What I've been doing is taking out meat for 2-3 days worth and just keeping it in the fridge until it's gone. When it's low, I bring the next baggy outta the freeze and pop it in the fridge the night before. So they got turkey yesterday and today, heart and liver today and tomorrow, whatever's left over plus some pork etc the next day.
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Post by katt on Mar 12, 2011 16:27:03 GMT -5
Yup, sounds good. That's about what I do too.
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Post by katt on Mar 12, 2011 16:27:31 GMT -5
Except when I am lazy, then they get frozen meats. haha good thing they like it and it is enriching.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2011 16:28:59 GMT -5
I WISH they would eat frozen meats. I'm lucky they even eat COLD meats, let along frozen.
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Post by katt on Mar 12, 2011 16:30:41 GMT -5
lol They will get there I am sure! Have you ever tried giving them warm meats? I bet they would love that! Also to get them used to the idea of cold, a fun game is to put some ice cubes in a dish of water for them to fish out. They have a blast doing it, and then chasing the cube around the floor after they finally get one out! Bring lots of towels! ;D
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2011 16:32:15 GMT -5
They don't like ice cube - too cold for their little paws I sometimes give warm meats, they seem to prefer it, but they go bad faster, so I try to stick to cold meats
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Post by katt on Mar 12, 2011 16:35:23 GMT -5
Yeah it is more of a treat to get warm meats. lol It might be work trying for new meats they seem unsure of though. Give them a little bit warm for a taster, then cold for the day...
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2011 18:37:32 GMT -5
Good idea! Anyway they have heart and liver in the bowl with freeze dried sprinkled on top. I stuffedone piece of heart into Trixie. Pixie nibbled on a piece of liver and ate one piece of heart. Surprisingly Dixie was not into the organs. She gagged when stuffing the heart Hopefully their tummies get the better of them
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2011 22:14:51 GMT -5
Grrr. None of them ate the chunks, so I blended it up and they ate it fine. Maybe it's just a texture thing... Anyway they didn't mind it blended.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2011 0:52:04 GMT -5
So I went shopping today and got some really awesome stuff. Two full young chickens, with necks, livers, and a heart maybe (I can't tell why it is ) those were .79 cent a lb. Then I got 9-12 turkey necks. I got some chicken feet. I got two large turkey wings. For boneless meat days I got some stewing beef. The girls are eating turkey bone in again, and I gave a large portion of the wing whole. They've all been gnawing on it and dragging it around. So I'll probably stop chopping up their wings from now on. I also got some plain ground turkey because it's good for making soups and they like it a lot. I still need some pork, but it wasn't on sale this week, so I'm waiting on that. I also want to find CGH. I wasn't feeling well today so I didn't get any mice, but I might get some in the middle of the week.
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Post by katt on Mar 14, 2011 4:41:42 GMT -5
Sounds like they are gradually getting more and more variety! Good! They are doing so well. For the hearts and liver you might have to go the soupies -> purred -> chunky puree -> chunks -> whole route. Some foods just take more convincing. It is a real shame you can't get chicken heart very easily. I hope that Co-op thing works. Koda ADORES chicken hearts. After whole prey they are his favorite. Try putting the hearts and organs in your grinder perhaps and giving it ground? I don't know how easy that would be though considering the moisture content of heart/organs. You might just end up with soup-like mush anyways... lol Otherwise, try just pureeing them first and pouring it over their meats (after spoon feeding a few bites).
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2011 19:24:09 GMT -5
Okay, so today they got beef. All gone by the time I got home.
I have been trying to find an easy way to incorporate pumpkin into their everyday meals. I think I found a solution. I get a small about of pumpkin to some water and heat it up. It becomes kinda like a sauce. I sprinkle in a bit of eggshell, and then pour it over the meats and toss the meats in the pumpkin dressing. Today's stools looked great. Nicely formed, good color.
Anyway, I don't want to talk about graduation until I get some mice/rats worked into the menu. Hopefully I can get some around Wednesday. I think I might get some fuzzy ones (maybe adults will work okay, too) and chop them up, cover them with something yummy like oil or soup and just see how they do. I am planning on selling some stuff (my flute mainly) in order to buy a deep freezer. My eventual goal is to buy mice and rats locally (in bulk). Then get whole rabbits and quail from the co-op in tampa. And then fill in the other days with mostly chicken and turkey, with beef and pork and an organ day.
This is my goal menu. I probably won't be able to incorporate the rabbit and quail into the diet for about 2-3 months, but this is where I'd like to get one day soon.
Monday: Rabbit Tuesday: Chicken pieces bone in Wednesday: Mice Thursday: Misc meat day (turkey, beef, pork, etc) Friday: Quail Saturday: Rats Sunday: Misc meat day + extra organs (turkey, beef, pork, etc)
Is that too much bone?
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Post by katt on Mar 15, 2011 3:42:47 GMT -5
Keep in mind that every "part" of the diet should be balanced. So all of the days you feed whole prey, those days are balanced. Then you just need to look at the remaining days and make sure they are balanced. If I am making sense. I would perhaps give heart on the misc meat+organ day consistently, and then perhaps also the other misc meat day or chicken day like every other week. Or brains! Since they have taurine too! If I am correct, you cannot over do it on the taurine. While you are waiting for the quail, you can substitute that day with say CGH or duck. Here is something to consider for the non-whole prey days. I used to do this with Koda but not so much anymore due to the fact that certain things he can't have more than a few days in a row. But what I USED to do was try to make the majority of my pre-prepared meat-baggies contain the rough proportions of whole prey. So in one bag I might have a chicken wing, a piece of turkey neck, some beef chunks, a few chicken hearts, and a piece of liver; then in another I may have cornish game hen parts bone in (say back, breast, and a wing or leg), a piece of pork heart or a few chicken hearts. I would still make sure that each bag got a variety and so some bags had a little more bone, and some had a little more/less organ, etc. But in general most of the bags were pretty well balanced. This way I knew it didn't matter what baggie I pulled out of the freezer for the day, that day would consist of an almost entirely balanced meal(s). And with the slight variety between bags, it would all balance out to a completely balanced diet, but still with variety and proper proportions of M:B:O. A tip for the pumpkin that I recently discovered. I tried freezing it in cubes - HORRIBLE idea. It freezes like cement only worse. It is impossible to get out of the tray! haha What I found that DOES work is when I prepare the food bags, I put a fair sized scoop of pumpkin in each one. When I am done filling the bags, I gently (make sure not to poke holes with any sharp bones! haha) mush the bag contents around a little to spread to pumpkin over the meat. This way every meal has it's "fur" aka fiber content.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2011 10:58:57 GMT -5
The girls really don't balance themselves when they have several meats in front of them (which is why the rabbit worries me). If there is chicken wing, pixie won't eat the beef, Trixie won't eat the wing, etc. So I usually stick to a 1 meat a meal rule. I'm working on feeding liver and heart together, so on the chicken days I could feed bone in for the morning and then some organ stuffs with heart in the afternoon. Same with the misc days.
I like that idea for pumpkin! Everything I recently bought is ready frozen, but I will definitely try that next time.
Also, what is the amount of pumpkin per ferret a day (or week whatever)? I cannot remember it...
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