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Post by Deleted on Nov 18, 2014 16:59:24 GMT -5
Alright I will go get a hen tonight~ I'm a little worried though between Chanel's jaw being weird and bone... do you think it will be more harder to eat it and the bone might get stuck or make his gums bleed? [saw another member posted about a bad accident happening with her ferret and bone] I will post a picture of their current meals and post it later on tonight It's pretty chunky. As far as organs...I still have lots of chicken hearts and livers. The stores I saw have lots of pork organs like kidney and liver.. I also remember seeing beef tongue and some pork brains. Oh and what do you think of chicken backs and necks?
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Post by gfountain on Nov 18, 2014 17:52:33 GMT -5
There's no need to rush out and get a CGH tonight, lol. It will be a few days at least before we'll start on bone, lol. I just wanted to make sure you were prepared for it when we do start. I'm not sure how Chanel's jaw is going to affect his bone-crunching. We'll just have to try it and see. The bones are really good for dental health so I want to try to get him to eat them. Worst case scenario, he'll need to stay on soft foods and you'll have to brush his teeth, but I'm hoping that he'll at least be able to manage small or semi-crushed bones. As with anything else in life, accidents can happen when feeding bone even with a ferret with a completely normal jaw, but don't anticipate and worry about it. We'll see how he does and make adjustments as we go. Go ahead and thaw out a chicken heart and let's get them started on that. Cut it up a little smaller than the chunks they're currently eating and hand-feed them a couple to see if they like it. If they do, mix their next meal about half and half heart/muscle. If they don't, just add a few heart pieces to their meal and try to make sure they eat them. Hearts will cause darker, looser poops so don't worry when you see them after they eat the hearts. You'll need at least 2 organs, so at some point in the not-too-distant future, you'll want to pick up something besides liver. Many ferrets love pork brains; I can't find them so mine have never tried them. They do however, love beef tongue and it can be used as a replacement for hearts if necessary. Chicken backs and necks are good bone-in meats. They might be too big/too much for Chanel to handle, but as I said, we'll see how it goes. If he can't handle them but he can manage the smaller bones, you can always smash them up some. You're going to need to plan a 'goal menu' soon. Using the sample menu I gave you earlier, you need to plan what you WANT them to eat eventually, so we'll know what to work on with them. Use the lists of different kinds of meat (organ, bone-in, etc) and just fill-in-the-blanks with what you can get. Obviously, we won't be able to jump right into that menu, but we can work on getting it balanced and make sure you understand how to adjust it while the fuzzies work on learning to eat it.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 18, 2014 18:02:38 GMT -5
Ahhh I 'm getting a little anxious lol Thank you for the motivation. (Introduced four or five proteins, I built a basic menu and stuck to to it. ) Is this the menu I'll need to fill out? Sun AM: organ meal (½ liver, ½ other organ) Sun PM: edible bone-in meat Mon AM: edible bone-in meat (or muscle) Mon PM: edible bone-in meat Tues AM: heart Tues PM: edible bone-in meat Wed AM: muscle meat (*mixed with egg yolk!) Wed PM: edible bone-in meat Thur AM: heart and organ (½ liver, ½ other organ) Thur PM: edible bone-in meat Fri AM: edible bone-in meat (or muscle) Fri PM: edible bone-in meat Sat AM: muscle meat Sat PM: edible bone-in meat {note: not too much bone-in overload or they'll have a tough poop} I will definitely try to find other organs than liver since I heard that it's not good for ferrets to eat too much?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 18, 2014 18:08:14 GMT -5
oh and I forget... heart and gizzards are considered muscle meat? heart can be organ too, right? @_@
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Post by gfountain on Nov 18, 2014 18:13:03 GMT -5
That's the one. :thumbsup: Hearts and gizzards are muscle meat, not organs. While we normally consider all the inner parts of a body to be organs, for the purpose of a raw diet, organs are only the parts that secrete something. Hearts are just muscle; they're cardiac muscle rather than skeletal muscle, but muscle nonetheless.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 18, 2014 23:52:46 GMT -5
here's a pic of their meal tonight. they eat it better from my hand.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 18, 2014 23:55:06 GMT -5
and look at this, Gina.. the poop on the left is Chanel's and the on the right is Coco's. Chanel's is always more runny and seedy. What gives?
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Post by gfountain on Nov 19, 2014 19:48:26 GMT -5
It doesn't look too runny to me, but it seems seedier than it should be. The 'seeds' are undigested fats, so maybe Chanel just doesn't process fats as well as he should yet. It does look better than the last poop picture I saw from him though, so maybe he just needs more time for his system to adjust. Their food looks, well... unappetizing, lol! I'm sorry you have to put that in your hand, but hopefully we'll get past this stage quickly. It looks fairly chunky so that's great. Keep increasing the size of their slivers/chunks.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 19, 2014 23:41:55 GMT -5
Hm, maybe I'm just not used to seeing ferret poop, lol I really need to stop being so paranoid. and you know, I don't mind at all handling the raw and feeding them. It makes me happy to see them eat it at least.
I tried chopped raw heart and bigger pieces. They will not eat the heart alone (I figured) and they can't seem to chew bigger chunks that well. They try but it ends up falling out or they spit it out, lol.
I think I got a ways to go LOL
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Post by gfountain on Nov 20, 2014 10:56:46 GMT -5
That's OK. Just keep doing what you're doing, very slowly increasing the size of slivers. At least they're trying the bigger pieces. Are your chunks cut into cubes or longer slender pieces? They do better with the long slender ones. Keep working on getting them to take that heart. You're doing great!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 21, 2014 1:33:03 GMT -5
I'm in the process of trying to get another blender. I just can't stand chopping up slippery slimy rubbery meat with my shears and knife. [falls over] Not into tiny tiny pieces lol I just tried it tonight because they are all out of the last soup batches. Thank God the liver is really soft and watery! But they still didn't dig in....okay I will try long slender chunks next time...
I also tried before to grate frozen meat as slivers. They ate that really well but it was harder to make it. You grate grate grate and for so little amount.
Sorry if I seem like I'm complaining....ok maybe I am...
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Post by gfountain on Nov 21, 2014 10:49:36 GMT -5
Complaining is fine.. just don't give up!! I found the easiest way to get slivers and smaller chunks was with frozen meat and a potato peeler.. use it 'lightly' to get small slivers and really dig in to get small chunks.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 23, 2014 18:12:36 GMT -5
I got a Ninja blender!! I hope it works well with raw meat.
I'm a little stuck on what step to take next..Chanel is doing well eating small chunks and they are both off of soup, but Coco still needs coaxing to eat raw without kibble.
And should I go ahead and buy the CGH? and a turkey too? Since it's cheap right now. But I' m worried about fillers or some added chemicals they put in it.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 24, 2014 20:06:29 GMT -5
I got CGH, some turkey necks, and pork hearts. I blended up the CGH (with bones) is this okay?
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Post by gfountain on Nov 24, 2014 20:45:38 GMT -5
I'm so sorry I've been absent. Life got very very busy all of a sudden.
Your next step is to just keep increasing the size of their chunks and start adding a little bone. You said you blended up the CGH.. blended as in turned into a liquid?
It's still early for the turkey necks. They're very bone-dense so it will be a little while before they can eat those. Either go ahead and cut them into chunks to freeze or freeze them as is for now. The pork heart can be chunked into approximately 1 ounce chunks. Put a couple of chunks per baggie and freeze those also. That way they'll be in manageable pieces when you're ready to use them. Go ahead and cut one of the heart chunks into pieces the size of the chicken chunks they're eating and add a few to their next meal.
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