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Post by FerretsnFalcons on Sept 12, 2015 16:09:42 GMT -5
I feed my ferrets a bit differently from most of the ferrents on here (I think), and I haven't really seen any threads on it (at least not recently), so I thought I would provide some information on how I feed my fuzzies. I call it the hacked prey diet (name credit goes to Marica  ) because it is neither whole prey nor frankenprey. It combines some of the advantages and some of the disadvantages of both. Please note that I am NOT in any way trying to convince people that this diet is better than whole prey or frankenprey, or to convince people to switch to this way of feeding. I will go over both the pros and cons.
The hacked prey diet is basically whole prey that is prepared kind of like frankenprey. Every 6 months, I order the largest animals available from Rodentpro (XXL rats, XXXXXL guinea pigs, XXL rabbits, etc.) Then I spend a weekend "hacking" them up. I hack up enough prey for 3 months of meals, leaving the rest whole in the freezer until I need them. First, I skin the animal if needed. My ferrets don't like long fur or feathers, so I skin rabbits and chickens. Rats and guinea pigs keep their fur. Then I gut all the animals. After all that's done, I remove the organs and set them aside in a pile on the cutting board (liver, lungs, kidneys, etc.) Then I cut up the prey into meal-sized pieces, making sure that each piece contains bone with muscle meat attached. Strong kitchen shears will work for animals smaller than an XXXXXL guinea pig, for chickens and rabbits I break out the meat cleaver. My ferrets get 2.5oz per meal, so I cut off about 2.2oz of prey. Then I add .2 to .3oz of the organ meat from the pile. This means that each meal has meat, bone, and 10% organ. I bag these meals in little baggies and put all the little baggies into big baggies according to species and day of the week (for example, one bag will be "Tuesday: Guinea Pig" and another would be "Friday: Rabbit"). This may sound like a lot of work, but honestly I found it easier than preparing frankenprey.
For me, the hacked prey diet costs as much as frankenprey, although this may not be the case for everybody. I spend about $40 per month for two fuzzies, but you could definitely cut costs way down by not feeding mice (the most expensive of all prey), and sticking to cheaper prey like guinea pig, chicken, and rabbit. I like to splurge on food though. It is cheaper than whole prey, because with whole prey meal is an entire animal. The cost difference becomes clear when you realize that rabbits from Rodentpro, for example, are $14/lb when you order extra smalls and $1.30/lb when you order XXL's. The same goes for every other animal. If anybody wants, I will gladly post an entire list of how much each Rodentpro animal costs per pound. Also, Rodentpro has a really helpful free online quote generator that tells you how much everything is WITH shipping. In order to save the most money however, you will need a big enough freezer to hold 6 months or so of prey. Good kitchen shears and a meat cleaver are also good investments. Anyway, I will go over pros and cons now:
Pros: -Cheaper than whole prey, may be cheaper than frankenprey for some -No balancing needed as animals have correct proportions of meat, bone, and organ -The only math required is figuring out how much organ you should add to each meal (hint, just take the amount your ferrets eat each meal and move the decimal over to the left by one place ) -No driving around trying to find a market for organs; everything is delivered to your door -Ferrets still get fur, good for the digestive tract -You can still freak your friends and family out with dead animals in the freezer -You don't have to worry about added sodium, dyes, or preservatives
Cons: -A decent-sized freezer is pretty much required for maximum savings -More labor intensive than whole prey as you would have to gut, cut, and weigh out portions -NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH; if you can't even watch your ferret eat a rabbit, imagine having to skin it, pull out the intestines, and cut it into pieces -While you're preparing the prey, your kitchen WILL smell like intestines :puke: -This would be difficult to feed to ferrets who can't stand organs or won't eat them straight-up, as they will be able to pick them out. For multiple ferrets, I would take the small piece of organ in the meal, rip it into equal pieces, and give one piece to each. This is what I do for my ferrets, and it ensures that they each get the proper amount of organ every day.
So there you go, an overview of how I feed my ferrets. Of course, you can feed a mixture of whole prey, hacked prey, and frankenprey. This is actually what I do (I also feed mice, chicks as treats, and duck), but a large majority of it is hacked prey. People who want to feed prey but think it's too expensive to feed whole may want to consider this option. If you are squeamish, if you can't afford or have enough room for a separate freezer, if you don't think the savings are worth the amount of labor, or if you just don't like this diet for whatever reason, then stick with what works for you and your fuzzies. I just wanted to inform people, not make a sales pitch, lol. Anyway, thanks for reading, have a great day everybody!
PS: You can use a supplier other than Rodentpro, that's just the one I've been using and have done the math for as far as prices go. |
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Post by FerretsnFalcons on Sept 12, 2015 16:20:41 GMT -5
Oh, I forgot to mention that because some prey animals are so big (mainly chicken and rabbits), legs, wings, and skulls may need to be smashed with a hammer/cleaver. Depends on the ferret though, mine are brats when it comes to bigger bones.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2015 16:32:29 GMT -5
Sounds good to me.  I think they like smelling the variety of the pieces of the prey. Like i cut up a whole cornish and gave mine the other day, and they seemed more interested in the cornish like that than when I put out a wing..... but i have pickie ferrets Do u cut up your mice and rats, as well? Sometimes i give a heart every other day and sometimes I have heart meals like on frankenprey diet. What do you do about that? |
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Post by FerretsnFalcons on Sept 12, 2015 16:44:10 GMT -5
Mice are given whole, guts and all. I order XXXL rats (they weigh about 1 pound each) and portion them out using the above method. I gut them but don't skin them. My ferrets seem to like the hacked up prey more than frankenprey. |
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Post by bitbyter on Sept 12, 2015 21:49:35 GMT -5
I'm confused...How is it cheaper than whole prey? Aren't you just chopping up whole prey?
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Post by Sherry on Sept 13, 2015 0:14:25 GMT -5
I don't quite get it either? You are feeding whole prey(if in pieces as many do for larger animals) as compared to X amount of chicken wings/necks etc to mimic bone, beef heart:kidney and pork liver to replace organs, and hoat/lamb etc to replace muscle meats.
Which is what frankenprey is
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Post by FerretsnFalcons on Sept 13, 2015 0:17:47 GMT -5
Hi bitbyter, yes, I am chopping up whole prey. But I chop up HUGE prey, which saves money but is more labor intensive. I guess the easiest way for me to explain would be through example. Let's say my ferrets only eat rabbit (to make calculations simpler), and they eat 8oz a day. If I were feeding them typical whole prey, they would get one whole XS rabbit, which weighs about 8oz, a day. Each XS rabbit from Rodentpro is $7, so I would be spending $7 a day on food. With hacked prey, I would buy an XXXL rabbit, which weighs about 10lbs, and cut it up into 8oz portions according to the method that I mentioned in my first post. A 10lb rabbit from Rodentpro costs $13, which means that an 8oz portion of that rabbit costs 65 cents. I went from spending $7 a day on food, to 65 cents a day. You might also save on shipping, depending on what all you ordered, because a 10lb XXXL rabbit would take up 34% of a standard-sized box, while 10lbs of XS rabbits (that's 20 bags of XS rabbits) would take up 60% of the box. I hope that clears things up a little bit, I didn't really explain it that well in my first post. |
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Post by FerretsnFalcons on Sept 13, 2015 0:53:22 GMT -5
Hi Sherry, I guess it really just depends on your definition of whole prey and frankenprey. I always thought that whole prey was the feeding of an entire animal over 1-2 days. You don't have to cut that animal up or anything. Instead I feed an entire animal over 1-3 months, depending on the size of the animal, and obviously I have to cut it up because it would go bad if I left it out for months on end, lol. But I guess you could call it whole prey that is consumed over a long period of time. And I always thought that frankenprey was buying bone-in meat, muscle meat, liver, and another organ or two to mimic a whole animal, but you never feed an actual whole animal. Instead my ferrets do eat whole animals, but again, over a long period of time. So according to my definitions, hacked prey isn't really whole prey or frankenprey. I guess it would be closer to whole prey though than frankenprey. |
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Post by Sherry on Sept 13, 2015 2:03:31 GMT -5
Okay, got it! I thought you were feeding over the course of a few days/week. So basically a frankenprey diet with a variety of proteins
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Post by bitbyter on Sept 13, 2015 10:35:03 GMT -5
I basically do the same thing. I get whole rabbits (minus the head and fur) from a local farm. I also get plucked quail from them. I portion and feed according to the frankenprey menu. I also feed hormone free pork and I raise ASF's for them so basically a mixture of frankenprey and whole prey. You're not really don't anything "new", you're just being smart about how you spend your money. :thumbsup: |
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Post by bitbyter on Sept 13, 2015 10:53:22 GMT -5
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Post by katt on Sept 13, 2015 13:22:34 GMT -5
The problem with this is you are separating the organs and hearts out, so you still need to be sure that the menu is properly balanced. It would be all too easy to not give the correct amount of organs/heart - so you would still need to follow the basic menu more or less. Also, larger whole prey isn't always well balanced. Chickens for example, have been altered and bred and bred to produce a lot of muscle meat for us humans - big juicy breasts and thighs. Yet look at how tiny a single chicken heart is. Then compare that to say, a wild partridge and what their meat:organ content would be.
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Post by FerretsnFalcons on Sept 14, 2015 0:50:25 GMT -5
Oh. My. Goodness. I just spent 30 minutes typing out a response even though it's way past my bedtime and I lost Internet connection when I tried to post. Everything was erased. That is SO frustrating!  I promise I will retype the post tomorrow if I have time. Curse you bad Internet connection! |
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Post by katt on Sept 14, 2015 1:57:42 GMT -5
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Post by FerretsnFalcons on Sept 14, 2015 23:35:46 GMT -5
Ok, I finished homework early so I could try to remember and retype what I wrote last night, ugh. Luckily I think I remember most of it: Hi katt! I do check that the menu is balanced because when I portion the prey I always make sure that there is bone, meat, and 10% organ. I noticed that when I was cutting up guinea pigs and rats I was actually left with some extra organ, while when I cut up chickens and rabbits I didn't have enough. There were 5 meals (2 chicken, 3 rabbit) that contained no organ as a result. As you noted, this is probably because of the sheer "meatiness" of these animals. However, of the 180 meals that my ferrets eat in 3 months, only 5 contained no organ, and there were GP and rat meals that contained extra organ. They also get some freeze-dried chicken liver treats, though not part of the regular diet. You are correct that chickens do not really have the correct proportions. How disproportionate are they? We don't really know, I guess, someone would have to separate and weigh the meat, bone, and organs in a chicken to find out. But the important thing is that I don't just feed chicken. In fact, no single protein makes up more than 20% of my ferrets' diet. Variety is key, as I'm sure you know. As far as heart goes, (and this kind of goes back to abbeytheferret6 's question as well), it is true that my ferrets do not get as much heart as is included in the typical frankenprey menu. However, they do eat other taurine rich parts in addition to heart, such as nervous system/brain, eyes, tongue, and dark meat. Ferrents who feed frankenprey probably do not feed or even have access to all of these parts. Also, rodent tissue is naturally high in taurine (here is an article that discusses the reason.) Certainly adding extra heart to the "hacked prey" would be a good idea, but I do not think that not adding extra heart makes it unbalanced. Anyway, you are absolutely right when you say that this still needs to be balanced. I do so by making sure that pretty much every meal contains bone, meat, some fur (although this isn't a necessity) and 10% organ. They are eating everything that they would eat in a true whole prey diet. I hope this clears some things up! Now I'm going to copy this post before I hit send so that I have a backup in case the Internet fails me again! PS: Thank you so much bitbyter for taking the time to look up those places for me! Although that exotic meat market sounds sketchy, I mean who sells otter and peacock meat? :thankyou: |
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