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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2015 13:05:17 GMT -5
Beef is a strong flavor and most ferrets balk at eating it. I look for a fatty ground beef and then whip up an egg with some warm water. I pour that over the beef and they will eat it that way.
You want a red meat meal in their menu. Red meat is high in Iron and Vitamin B. If you need to, push them a little on the red meat. You could give them some beef for several meals in a row, or wait until they are a little more use to getting new foods and try the beef again. Lamb is another red meat and you might try that also. Lamb can be expensive in some areas, but if it's available, you might try some.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2015 21:30:16 GMT -5
I would mix the ground beef into the soupie to start, and then slowly decrease the amount of soup in the mix. Of course you still need to make sure they're getting the right balance of organs and calcium too. It was in the soupie in really tiny pieces. They licked around it. Tricky ferrets! The Rad Cat has the balance as far as I've been told. :3 The ground beef was just for a snack experiment. Here is a nutritional analysis and the ingredients: (bolded important bits) Free-range turkey thigh and leg meat, free-range turkey heart, free-range turkey liver, filtered water, organic egg yolk, human-grade bone meal, organic kelp, organic dulse, gelatin, organic psyllium husk powder, wild salmon oil, manganese gluconate
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2015 21:31:57 GMT -5
Beef is a strong flavor and most ferrets balk at eating it. I look for a fatty ground beef and then whip up an egg with some warm water. I pour that over the beef and they will eat it that way. You want a red meat meal in their menu. Red meat is high in Iron and Vitamin B. If you need to, push them a little on the red meat. You could give them some beef for several meals in a row, or wait until they are a little more use to getting new foods and try the beef again. Lamb is another red meat and you might try that also. Lamb can be expensive in some areas, but if it's available, you might try some. There's actually a lamb meat diet for Rad Cat. I plan on getting some in the next shipment! (And shall persevere with the beef, since I have a chunk left)
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Post by Celene on Feb 9, 2015 21:47:34 GMT -5
Ferrets can be super stubborn. Last night I introduced our girls to kidney. Their organ meal was previously 1/2 heart and 1/2 liver which was ground, but now that I have lamb kidney it's 1/2 heart, 1/4 liver and 1/4 kidney. My grinder is in storage so I just cut the kidney really small. Guess I missed a few pieces though because Mocha wasn't too impressed with it: Before: After: Not a hint of anything else, but plenty of well-cleaned kidney! Nova ate all of hers though. If you haven't already, check out the thread on commercial grinds. I've never used it but I'm pretty sure rad cat IS balanced I switched my girls using a commercial grind since I didn't have a blender to make soupie. To start I mixed water in so it was a rather soupie sort of texture anyway
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2015 22:45:38 GMT -5
So today Elisha not only decided to poop out green cloth (of which my boyfriend JUST told me she was doing. Great.), but thank goodness we think she passed all of it. Nothing about her changed. She'd been eating, playing, and pottying consistently. Green chewed cloth was found and terminated. So, again, not only did she decide to give me a heart attack (when he said green poop, I was thinking ECE), she ALSO decided to eat all of the soupie and leave Moses starving. What a piggy. So, since we were out of soupie, we simply took our commercial raw and added warm water and mushed it up. I added a few drops of pumpkin seed oil, since Moses loves that stuff, and set it out. I was afraid she may not like it, since it wasn't the usual soupie (blended, filled with an egg). And there she is! Eating it all up, despite the different texture and being straight, bleeding turkey meat. I was very impressed with her. Also, my cats have started licking at the raw meat and nibbling it, too. Finally, some breakthroughs.
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Post by Celene on Feb 11, 2015 23:10:46 GMT -5
I'm so proud of Moses!
Ferrets tend to eat A LOT for their first few weeks on raw (apparently because they are making up for nutrients they lacked while on kibble) so just keep feeding them as much as they like.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2015 23:58:35 GMT -5
I'm so proud of Moses! Ferrets tend to eat A LOT for their first few weeks on raw (apparently because they are making up for nutrients they lacked while on kibble) so just keep feeding them as much as they like. Honestly, Elisha has always eaten a ton. She was starved before I received her, so I am certain there's psychological factors coming into play. I have a cat who was starved and scarfs food down in the same manner. Lookit this fatty. She does love her food:
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Post by Celene on Feb 12, 2015 0:50:18 GMT -5
Awwwe, that's such a cuddly looking belly! Nova was previously starved, but she doesn't over eat. She's more of a scavenger in the sense that she'll eat basically anything I give her.
My grandma has a cat that she rescued and that cat is THE fattest cat I've ever seen. She's kind of rectangular-shaped, like a cow.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2015 22:36:31 GMT -5
So it seems we've run into a problem. Elisha is happily eating her soupies and doing well. Moses, on the other hand, has started to refuse to eat.
She refused soupie, she refused baby food, but she did steal a piece of the cat kibble and run off. I'm unsure of whether she's simply refusing soupie suddenly or there's an underlying problem of her refusing food, period.
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Post by Celene on Feb 14, 2015 23:04:46 GMT -5
Was Moses previously eating soupie really well? I'm going to tag @poncesmom because she is a mentor and will give actual proper advice as opposed to my uninformed guesses
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2015 23:06:55 GMT -5
Was Moses previously eating soupie really well? I'm going to tag @poncesmom because she is a mentor and will give actual proper advice as opposed to my uninformed guesses For the most part, yes. She would eat her soupie, though sometimes she needed to be spoon fed in order to coax her into it. I managed to coax her into eating something just now by adding pumpkin seed oil, though I can't say she wasn't just licking it up out of the soupie. It's just a very sudden stop and it concerns me. She is still acting normal otherwise.
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Post by Celene on Feb 14, 2015 23:27:14 GMT -5
Hmm... Maybe try watering it down a little more with warm water?
I don't know what your household "living arrangement" is (i.e. how much supervision, where the cat'd food is kept) but you did mention you saw her with a piece of cat kibble - any chance she's been secretly filling up on that?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2015 23:47:07 GMT -5
Hmm... Maybe try watering it down a little more with warm water? I don't know what your household "living arrangement" is (i.e. how much supervision, where the cat'd food is kept) but you did mention you saw her with a piece of cat kibble - any chance she's been secretly filling up on that? I live in a studio apartment, so there's not much any of them can get away with. Our ferrets and cats are on a feeding schedule, so it's not possible she's filling up on cat food. The ferrets eat inside their cage the same time the cats eat their kibble (which is being mixed with wet food for a transition to raw) on the kitchen floor. After they're done eating (the cats get 20 minute intervals), the food is put away. The ferrets are never around the cat food and cats never around the ferret food.
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Post by Celene on Feb 15, 2015 0:18:00 GMT -5
Ahh, well scratch that then. Your best bet is getting advice straight from a mentor. I am in no way qualified to give advice. I often do since some questions people ask are pretty straightforward, but when a fuzzy's health is potentially at risk I'll leave to an expert like Heather or gfountain. That's a total of three mentors tagged in this thread now, so between them at least someone will see this and respond, and hopefully have a good idea or two!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2015 14:23:28 GMT -5
I hope so!
A quick update:
Moses was refusing this morning, but we left the food sitting for a while, then tried to spoon feed her. My SO and I were able to hold her and spoon feed her two spoonfuls before she refused again. We're letting her run around for a bit now before trying to offer more.
I'm glad she ate, but I'm afraid it's not enough. The food she ate was the chicken commercial grind (instead of turkey) mixed with water. Nothing else.
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