Okay I am still drinking my coffee, but overall looks good. It's hard sometimes to put the whole picture together off of daily posts when every week blurs right by, so that is helpful.
I didn't realize they would all eat plain liver soup - I thought they revolted against that. Guess I misunderstood. :/ That is fantastic! (dance) So now our use of soup changes - sorry I'm going to change what I just said.
1.) Organs - since they are accepting all liver soup, the organs should be cut back to 1.5 meals a week. There are various ways you can mix and match those meals, but for now this is what I am going to recommend... Make one meal a week pure liver soup, and during that meal work on adding in slivers of liver and gradually moving them towards chunks of liver. For the other meal, try to work them up to half brain, the other half of the soup can be whatever you want. Eventually we'll try to get them eating brains on their own for the sake of accepting it without another meat added, but for now step 1 is getting them to eat soup that's half brains (and other organs if you find any).
2.) Other soups...it is perfectly fine to use a little soup gravy to introduce new meats.
Just try to not let them get away with gobbling the soup and not the other foods and new meats. For example I see you gave hearts in FDR soup - will they not eat the hearts without soup yet? If not, then the soup is okay but work on weaning them off of it. If they will eat hearts without soup though, then just give them plain hearts. AND if they will only eat them in chunks, work them up towards whole chicken hearts (obviously big things like pork or beef heart will need to be chopped up though lol).
For proteins so far we have chicken, turkey, pork, and working on beef. That covers your bases for protein variety, but more is always better so anything you add in from here on out is a bonus. Are there other meats that you want to introduce them to? I always recommend lamb and/or goat if you can get it, afford it, and convince them to eat it. It's super good to have them familiar with, even just the occasional meal, in case you ever run into food allergies, IBD, upset tummies etc that need a gentle "hypoallergenic" meat. That said, many ferrets despise lamb and refuse to touch it no matter what. *ahemKoda* It's also expensive. Goat is similar to lamb, and I find it's a LOT cheaper for me up here. I get my goat from a local Halal market, but I recently found some at the Asian market too.
Some other good meats....
Duck - great fatty meat with nice dible bones
Rabbit - gentle on sensitive tummies, but very deficient in fat and taurine, still a great meat to offer though
Cornish Game Hen (CGH) - a bit spendy but Awesome to feed. They are nice and small so easy to prep (I just quarter mine), and the bones are all small so fantastic eating size for the ferrets
Bison - similar to beef, expensive, just another way to add variety if you come across it. Koda is allergic to beef but he can eat Bison in small amounts. Red meats are good for them, great sources of Vit B and Iron.
Anything else you find along the way.
Like I said you do have your bases covered for variety, but more is always better.
RE the CGH, the bones are nice and small, you might have some better luck with Mika on the game hen. Just an option to consider.
As for the lap feeding the big issue with that is when they become dependent on mommy to feed them. Then what happens if you have to leave town, and they stop eating bc mom isn't there to hand feed them every meal. Hand feeding is a great way to get them eating new foods, to make sure they are eating enough, and a great way to bond with them. Just be careful that they don't get to where they won't eat if you aren't there to hand feed them. As long as they will still eat on their own, then hand feed away.
I know this is a lot at once in one post, but I'd like for you to start working on practice menus too.
You can just post one once a week if that works for you. Either write down what you are feeding each day and post it, or make a plan for the week ahead and we can adjust it before you start the week - either way is perfectly fine.
As a reminder the guidelines for their weekly menus is....
Assuming a 2 meal a day system:
10% heart = 1.5 meals
10% organ (at least half liver) = 1.5 meals*
7-9 bone-in meals (containing significant amounts of edible bone)
RE the organ, you can mix and match the 1.5 meals in multiple ways, here are a few examples. [As a note too, a "meal" is all food eaten in a roughly 12 hour period. So am meal is breakfast and everything eaten during the day, pm is dinner and everything eaten overnight.]
Example 1:
Day 1:
am: Liver
pm: Half Other (brain, kidney, etc), Half Heart
Day 2:
am: Heart
pm: bone-in meal
Example 2:
Day 1:
am: Half Liver, Half Other organs
pm: Half Liver, Half Heart
Day 2:
am: Heart
pm: bone-in meal
Example 3:
Day 1:
am: Organ Mix*
pm: Half Organ-Mix, Half Heart
Day 2:
am: Heart
pm: Bone-in meal
*Organ Mix = a "mix" you make up yourself that is half liver half other organs.
Of course you probably won't want to feed all of the heart and organ meals one after the other (my boys do well with it, but many ferrets don't), so you'd want to spread those meals out, but I wanted to give you a few examples to start thinking of how you can structure your final menu. I find that it works best for the half meal to use heart and organs for a few reasons...
1.) Heart and Organs both require 1.5 meals, so it just makes sense to combine the 2 half meals
2.) Many ferrets will pick out their favorite parts, so it is hard to ensure they are getting the right balance if you say do a meal of half liver and half muscle meat - one ferret might eat all of the liver, while another might avoid the liver in favor of the other meat.
3.) With #2 in mind, heart and organs are a lot more similar to each other in taste and texture than compared to muscle meats, so I find that mixing them up together ferrets are less likely to pick out one or the other.
As long as the balance is met and you can ensure they are all eating all of the parts that they need though, you can mix and match things however you please. My reasons for now for the half brain soup in adding whatever you want for the second half instead of heart specifically, is right now the focus is just to get them to eat the brains, and a meat they like better than hearts may be more effective for that. If you want to just use heart though and use hand feeding and such to convince them to eat a half heart, half brains soup then go for it.
Oh and one last thing, going back to the menu - it should be in this type of format:
(each meal should include meat type and form e.g. smashed chicken wings, heart soup, pork chunks, turkey soup with 1" beef slivers... feel free to add notes if you want to as well, like Mika didn't eat.
Day 1 (or "Sunday"):
am:
pm:
Day 2:
am:
pm:
Day 3:
am:
pm:
Day 4:
am:
pm:
Day 5:
am:
pm:
Day 6:
am:
pm:
Day 7:
am:
pm: