Questioning switching to raw...

[Alex]

I have been looking over this forum for some time. I currently
give my ferrets Wysong Epigen 90. I have been aware of raw but really don’t know
much about it, hence why I have been scoping out this forum. I was thinking
about switching, but before I do, does feeding a raw diet give your ferret a
longer life? Is it proven that they will live longer than on kibble? Don’t take
this wrong, but I don’t want to go through and commit to a switch if feeding
raw really wont change much in my ferrets health.

[Sherry]

Well. My one ferret had to have surgery for pancreatic debulking because of the insulinoma the kibble caused. She was healed from a major surgery in under 2 weeks.
I had one with IBD who refused to take his supplements to keep it under control. He lived quite well with watery diarrhea caused by the IBD for over a year. That would have dehydrated and killed a kibble fed ferret in under a month.
In other words- your ferret will still get many of the illnesses they are prone to. What raw will do is give them a MUCH better quality of life than their kibble fed counterparts.
Just the fact a ferret detoxes for about a month once switched from kibble says it all to me.

[Alex]

So its proven that kibble causes insulinoma ? its definite that a feret will get insulinoma if fed kibble?

[Heather]

Eventually yes, there also appears now to be a genetic predisposition that has been cropping up. Here's one....Boris is my wee casualty ferret a total train wreck of a wee one. At 2, he collapsed on the floor in the middle of play...not breathing, no heartbeat. Scared the crap out of me. Grabbed him rubbed him vigorously, he gave a choke and a gasp and started breathing. Rushed him into the vet. Diagnosis...heart attack...ok what does this have to do with diet. Hear me out. Thorough check up. Boris has never been able to close his mouth because his skull is so deformed it affects his jaw (he is a Waardy), because of this he's also deaf, he cannot be scruffed because it will shut off his air way causing him to suffocate and pass out. Diagnosis at this check up....malformed heart, heart murmur and cardiomyopathy. To make matters even worse he has a heart arrhythmia, that's what caused the collapse, he went into v-fib. He was obviously placed on heart medication, one of the meds is of course lasix. Lasix helps remove the fluid build up, it's a diuretic. My vet warned me that there would come a point in his life where the Lasix could no longer be increased because they will dehydrate. This often doesn't take very long as the dosage is about .25mls. She mentioned at the time the longest she'd ever been able to keep a heart ferret alive was 18 months from the point of diagnosis. Boris is now 5 yrs old, his lasix dosage is .5mls. He's still alive because of the moisture from his raw diet. Unfortunately, he's also lived long enough to become adrenal...but he's not insulinoma. He's been raw fed all his life. No, the diet could not fix what the farm had created but it did help him cope. Boris is a Marshals product. His previous owner (I do rescue) had been a firm believer in a raw, natural diet...he got that from the time he was purchased at 7 weeks.
All little ones that come into my rescue/hospice are switched to a raw diet. The oldest was a 9 yr old. Yes, she benefited. It bought her another 18 months of life. When she was dumped, she could barely walk, slept 90% of the time. The raw diet gave her a new lease on life allowing her to rumble around and check things out every day. She would be awake for a good 2 to 3 hrs throughout the day. Over 35 ferrets have called my house their home, all have been switched. I've had 2 confirmed diagnosed with insulinoma. I've had 5 suspected and were treated but 3 didn't respond to treatments. One was diagnosed with a brain tumour,Zena. One with a spinal tumour, Calypso and another with cancer of the duodenum, Azrael. Does a raw diet help keep the insulinoma at bay...yes.

ciao

[Sherry]

Alex- go to the health and medical board here on the forum. Check our the board for insulinoma and just READ.
Bob Church, who many of us revere almost as the ultimate ferret guru HAS proven beyond redundancy that if a ferret is fed a whole prey diet from weaning, that ferret will not develop insulinoma. If a ferret is fed a strict raw meaty bone diet from weaning, odds are well nigh to impossible said ferret will develop it.
However, if at any point you ferret has had kibble the odds increase depending on how long they are on it.
Our little one who had the debulking done. 6 days post op she had her levels checked. She did NOT want to be there and proceeded to throw a massive tantrum. For 2 hrs straight
The reason we were there for two hours? Her bg registered at 1.9(38).
She should have been in the throes of uncontrollable seizures. The fact she showed NO signs of insu was chalked up to her diet.

[Deleted]

My first ferret, London, was fed a raw diet when we got him so we didn't really notice much with him. However when we got his buddy, Oslo, he was fed marshalls ferret food. Oslo pooped an absurd amount of stinky poops, and had short cropped whiskers. Thankfully he transitioned easily and he has been on two months raw now. He definitely poops quite a bit less, and it doesn't smell awful, he is full of energy and his whiskers are getting long and soft. Oslo sold me on raw. Also mushing up that pellet food was a LOT grosser to me than the raw meatballs my husband and I make for the boys!

[Deleted]

Many kibble-fed ferrets develop insulinoma.
Very few raw-fed ferrets (ferrets that have never eaten kibble) develop insulinoma, but it can happen.
There are more health benefits to feeding raw than just avoiding insulinoma.
I was skeptical about feeding raw when I first started with raw diets years ago. I would never go back to feeding a kibble diet because raw-fed ferrets are noticeably healthier. They retain better muscle, have more energy, and have luxurious coats. (They also get into more trouble )
-jennifer

[Alex]

My only concern is for holidays (or other family events) i go away for 1, sometimes 2 days. How would i be able to feed them raw if i am away? And how long does it usually take to switch?

[Deleted]

I use Freeze dried raw. I wanted to make the switch, when I first joined and learned how all the health benefits, but I couldn't find fresh chicken hearts in my area. So I started buying freeze dried raw, while I waited to find the hearts. Mine loved the FDR and eat like crazy. So, now their main menu is FDR and I have finally found hearts, and several times a week, they eat fresh raw and are introduced to something new. If you're interested in FDR, take a look at the Wysong Archetypal 1 and Stella and Chewy's. There are several others, but that's a good place to look, first. And I also should say that going fresh raw is easier and less expensive, I just wanted to offer something easy to pack and travel with.

[Heather]

I go away on holidays, usually a week at a time. I leave instructions on exactly how my little ones are to be treated, cleaned and fed. There are marked bowls in the freezer that have dates and names on them (I have at the moment 5 cages of ferrets...each cage has a name, I'm hoping that I will be able to soon add photos to the identifying tickets too). All they have to do is put those bowls in the fridge to thaw, and then serve to the identified ferrets. How easy can that be. Any uneaten food is picked up at the end of the day, new food put in it's place. The old food is scraped into the dog bowl, his food is then added to it and we have the dog's dinner at the end of the day.
Feeding raw has no issues even if you have a paid sitter coming in to feed your little ones. Instructions and pre-prepared meals and you're golden. It's easier than feeding moist cat food

ciao

[Deleted]

we are out of town right now and a neighborhood kid watches our boys while we are away. their food is parsed out into plastic bags that she just needs to pop into the bowl in the cage twice a day. no leftovers to worry about with us. I have a paper i leave called the cheat sheet in case she forgets something or there is an emergency.

[SumYungGai]

I've noticed you mentioning 'proof' a few times and it really depends on how you define proof. A peer reviewed study that's damning to kibble by a respectable member of the medical/veterinarian society? There's certainly a few about specific elements of it, like its effects on teeth. Or correlation with insulinoma when fed kibble. The theory on what causes insulinoma is pretty strong, at least the relationship between BG spikes and developing the disease. But as for trials on raw never developing insulinoma - it wouldn't exist because it'll be opposed by vets taught that kibble is best and raw causes problems (so nobody would fund it, not powerful firms anyway)

For others, like improved coats and dehydration - that's a little more anecdotal, though by quite an overwhelming majority. And it logically follows, better quality fats and protein should produce better oils and improved hair quality. Or why being fed something completely devoid of moisture would pull some water out of the body to digest it, and why that'd cause organ stress

Wysong isn't that bad with 10% carbohydrates, but even freeze dried raw can't avoid the dental problems and hydration thing. For perspective, Heather mentioned something about that being the difference between whether one of her boys are still living (Boris needed a lot more lasix than what a standard kibble fed ferret could tolerate for heart issues). As for the insulinoma theory, it goes something like

- Ferrets can't digest the starches (amylose) with enzymes (amylase) using the saliva, so all of it must go through their system some distance (until mid small intestine - jejunum) before it starts getting digested.
- When it reaches there, it has to be broken down to pass through properly, so the pancreas quickly floods them with the starch digesting enzyme (amylase) and a quick BG spike happens.
- The body can't deal with high levels of BG whilst keeping stable, so it decides to level it off with insulin.
- Pancreas gets overworked, inflamed (hypertrophy) and eventually develops small tumours (hyperplasia, neoplasia). These tumours don't stop producing insulin, called insulinomas. It keeps BG constantly low so it can easily trigger screaming seizures that kill before you can even get to the vet if you don't take them out of it (and caught by the time they show symptoms - too late)

* omnivores and herbivores have a part of their GI tract called the 'cecum' which is full of these enzymes and can slowly do the job instead of creating a massive BG spike. A ferret's GI tract is way shorter (without the cecum), about 100inches at around 3-4 hours digestion.