We are all moved into out temporary home for the next two weeks. She's already scoped out the apartment and put herself to bed.
She is still eating the soupies with the slivers like a champ!
Sounds like she is handling the move well - that is great.
If she's taking the slivers well, then let's work on separating organs and hearts from the meat meals. This is tricky and important since as you start to decrease the soup in her slivers, this means she'll be getting less organs and hearts due to getting less soup each day. This is the part that usually requires the most communication unfortunately, but I think it is important and will help you move forward a little easier. We CAN still do this with intermittent posts, I just need to make sure that you have a good grasp of the plan so you don't need me as much during the process. I'm going to try to give you a very thorough run down on what I have in mind since I know you aren't able to post here as often. I want you to ask for ANY clarification. If you have a good understanding of the plan I think things will go just fine even if you can't get on right away.
[Do you have FB and/or texting on your phone? I will PM you my cell # if you are able to text so you could reach me with any immediate questions.]
We really have 2-3 ways that you can approach things... I will run through a few options, then you can pick ONE of the options (it's important to stick to one) that you think will be most feasible for your schedule.
Option 1: SliversStart mixing slivers of liver and heart into her daily mix. Start with just a few as she may resist them at first, and work them up in amount. Once she will eat them mixed into her usual sliver and soup mix, then start to increase the organ and heart slivers slowly but steadily until you get to almost half organ and heart slivers to half meat slivers. Once you get there, then remove them from all but 4 meals a week. So she would get her current meat slivers+soup for most of her meals, and four meals a week in which half of the slivers are heart and organ slivers.
In the heart/organ meals continue to increase the heart and organ slivers while decreasing the meat slivers until she will eat them without any meat slivers mixed in. At this point you will probably still have soup mixed in unless you can convince her to eat them without the soup (which would be ideal). (For the soup you can use a simple meat puree instead of the original balanced soup since she'll be getting her organs via the slivers).If she still needs soup on the heart and organ slivers that is fine, but we do want to wean her off of the soup. If she will eat the heart and organ slivers without any soup on them, then cut it back to 3 meals a week. Meanwhile, on her meat meals, work on gradually decreasing the amount of soup in her slivers (so add more slivers, less soup). You can work on increasing size of slivers if you want, but at this stage I want the main focus of change to be on the heart and organ slivers.
Option 2: SoupRatio wise this is going to be similar to the slivers approach. It does kind of include an extra step, but often ferrets respond better to organ soup than organ slivers because of the texture issue so that is the big pro of this approach. The big con to this method is that since she is still eating slivers in soup, at some point you will probably have to make 2 different soup batches.
Start increasing the amount of organ and heart in her soup every day. It is a pain to do daily, do maybe increase it a bit with each soup batch if that's what you need to do. When you get the soup to about half organs and heart, to half meat, then cut back and only give her the soup for 4 meals a week. (For the rest of her muscle meals you can use a simple meat puree instead of the original balanced soup since she'll be getting her organs on the other meals). Continue to decrease the amount of meat in her organ/heart soup until she will accept plain organ and heart puree without any muscle meat added. When she gets to this point you need to cut it back to 3 meals a week. From there we will need to work on separating heart and liver, and then introducing slivers of those.
Option 3: ComboHeart is usually accepted a lot better than liver is (though not always). If you want to, try putting some heart slivers in her meals. If she accepts them without much trouble you can use the Soup approach for liver, and the Sliver approach for heart. This is a bit more complicated because you will really be doing 2 different things at once, but it will reduce some extra steps later.
Start increasing the amount of organ only in her soup every day, WHILE adding heart slivers to her meals. When you get the soup to about half liver to half meat, then cut back and only give her the soup for
3 meals a week. (For the rest of her muscle meals you can use a simple meat puree instead of the original balanced soup since she'll be getting her organs on the other meals). Continue to decrease the amount of meat in her organ soup until she will accept plain organ puree without any muscle meat added. When she gets to this point you need to cut it back to 2 meals a week kind of (see below).***
Meanwhile you will be increasing the amount of heart slivers in her meals. When she will accept about half heart slivers, then cut back to only giving her the slivers every other meal. If you can get her to accept heart slivers on their own (either without any soup, or in meat puree soup), then cut the hearts back to 2-3 meals a week (see below).***
HERE is the key. When you get the organ soup down to a plain organ puree for 2 meals a week, what you ACTUALLY need to do is give her ONE meal a week that is organ puree, ONE meal a week that is half organ puree mixed in with an equal amount (the other half) of heart slivers, and then she will need one more meal every week that is just heart slivers (with some meat soup/puree drizzled over them for now if needed).
e.g.:
am: organ puree
pm: 1/2 organ puree, 1/2 heart slivers
am: heart slivers
pm: muscle meat slivers
(only you will want to spread these meals out over the week to avoid a huge mess of poops)
*******************************************************************************************************************
The END GOAL for her balanced diet is 10% organs, 10% heart. This means 1.5 meals every week needs to be organ (half liver, half other organs) and 1.5 meals every week needs to be heart. This is what we are working towards. This is why as the amount of organ and heart in the soup/slivers increases, you will need to decrease the number of meals.
This is really the most complicated and tricky part of the switch. Once you have her eating organs and hearts though, it will just be a matter of getting her to eat chunks on her muscle meat meals, and then bones. You will have overcome one of the biggest hurdles. Two really since she is already accepting a variety of different proteins!
These sound like a lot all written out, so please ask if you need ANY clarification on any of the options. Think and decide which one sounds the most doable for you and let me know. If you want my cell so you can text any immediate Q's during this process let me know and I will PM you. (You can also message me on FB: Katt Crouch, just be sure to tell me who you are lol).
The reason that I want to tackle this now is because she is doing so well with the slivers. It's really time to increase her slivers and gradually wean her off of the soup, but then she will not be getting her organs or hearts. It's super important that she stay balanced, so I want to focus on getting the organs and hearts out of the way so that you can move her forward with the slivers. What I do
NOT want to do is overwhelm you. Whichever method you choose the key is still going to be Slow and Steady wins the race!
I will guide you along the way and we can definitely still work via infrequent posts. (Which is why I want to make sure that you have a good understanding of the plan - whichever option you pick - before sending you off on your way
).