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Post by Corvidophile on Dec 12, 2015 10:05:44 GMT -5
Oop, didn't digest the ground bison well the second time it was given, seedy junk suspended in diarrhea. The first time had mouse directly before and after, this time he had a chick, waited a few hours, then the ground bison.
By the way, generally how I introduce new items is in between mouse meals because mouse is his main steady, then in larger quantities further apart from other meals. To get him restarted on poultry organs I had to LITERALLY go frankenprey by opening a mouse, removing intestines, and inserting the new item inside. Most everything else he'll eagerly try on first sight though, he's fully reaccepted poultry organs and he's a great eater when I'm not trying to feed him poultry muscle and bone.
I still have no solid theory as to why he suddenly started hating it, why he would eat it at my inlaw's house and then dried out a bit, because he started refusing that, too. Again, no batch change! Here are my guesses for parts of the situation, though:
1. He's a nervous/boredom eater, which is why he ate a lot more when in a strange environment and a small travel cage
2. The exterior of one or more birds became overwrought with bad bacteria, which made him ill on consumption and made him distrust all similar meat
3. There's something deposited in the muscle and skin (an allergen, a normally occurring protein, a pesticide or preservative, something that landed on them during the plucking process, heck maybe even latex gloves for all I know) that makes him ill that is not present when the birds have their inners cleaned
4. He had an intolerance for chicken all along and only when I started introducing more types of animal did he realize he didn't have to feel bad after eating (this actually happened to me THREE TIMES, I tried a meal of sushi and was shocked that I didn't feel bloated and drowsy afterward, which I up until then thought were the normal feelings associated with being full so I never questioned! Led me to experiment with other limited ingredient and raw foods and identify several sodium based preservatives set me off. It happened again when I vacationed in Canada (Winnipeg, actually! The source of his name) and led me to find out I again didn't feel bad drinking soda or eating candy (identified corn syrup as a trigger), and finally I found out I was sensitive to tannins and sulfites when I tried other alcohols than red wine and realized the swollen, gooey, sour stomach feelings I had associated with drinking were not related to alcohol itself.)
5. Same start as reason 4 with trying more and more types of food... But just decided he hates the taste and doesn't have to put up with it
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Post by Corvidophile on Jan 5, 2016 17:46:46 GMT -5
Practically no change, just keeping the current list in my latest update- ran across another chicken back in my bag of bone-in poultry I was organizing, it had more flesh on it than other spines I'd given him lately, fed it and he ate half of it and then vomited! So I'm gonna just throw them all out closer to garbage pickup so I'm not stinking up the backyard.
Naturally, he chose to vomit in the little space between the fridge and the wall, under a radiator. Had to drag the fridge a few feet to crouch back there.
Frankenprey accepted as of now: chicken: gizzard, liver, heart, skin (but only dried up) Cornish: every organ and the spine plus the immediate, deep red muscles around it. JUST spine. Beef: lung, kidney Bison: 80 muscle/20 fat ground Venison: muscle Rabbit: muscle, bone, liver
Frankenprey refused as of now: chicken/Cornish: muscle, skin, fat, and bone except spine Pork: muscle, feet Goat: muscle
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Post by Corvidophile on Sept 12, 2016 16:34:57 GMT -5
Frankenprey accepted as of now: chicken: Just organs Cornish: Just organs Turkey: heart, liver Beef: lung, kidney Bison: 80 muscle/20 fat ground Venison: muscle Rabbit: All parts except feet of a butchered whole rabbit Duck: chest cavity Salmon: canned cooked, raw muscle Clams: canned cooked
Frankenprey refused as of now: chicken/Cornish/turkey: muscle, skin, fat, and bone; feet Duck: feet Rabbit: feet Pork: muscle, feet Goat: muscle Tilapia: raw muscle Tuna: raw muscle
whole prey accepted as of now: fancy mice (mus musculus): hopper, adult white-footed mice (peromyscus leucopus): all ages from day old to 5 years Guinea pig: if they're less than a pound, and only from certain sources Blue jay: fledgling Chicken: unfertlized egg, hatchling, 3 weeks Quail (unknown specie): hatchling, 4 weeks
whole prey refused as of now: Guinea pig: bigger than a pound, and all ages from certain sources Sardines: canned cooked
Captured bugs: Houseflies: bitten and left Grasshoppers (unknown specie): bitten and left Ants (unknown specie) bites them all, swallows some
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Post by Corvidophile on May 22, 2017 20:03:20 GMT -5
Time for an updated list:
Frankenprey accepted as of now: chicken: Just organs Cornish: Just organs Turkey: heart, liver Pork: tongue, kidney Beef: lung, kidney, muscle, ground bones and marrow, brain Bison: 80 muscle/20 fat ground Venison: muscle Duck: chest cavity, wings Salmon: canned cooked, cooked skin, raw muscle, smoked lox Clams: canned cooked Catfish: cooked muscle
Frankenprey refused as of now: chicken/Cornish/turkey: muscle, skin, fat, and bone; feet Duck: feet Rabbit: feet, head Pork: muscle, feet Goat: muscle Tilapia: raw muscle Tuna: raw muscle Catfish: raw muscle Salmon: raw skin
whole prey accepted as of now: fancy mice (mus musculus): hopper, adult Wild house mice (mus musculus): all ages white-footed mice (peromyscus leucopus): all ages Guinea pig: adults skinned only, won't eat with fur Blue jay: fledgling Black-capped chickadee: fledgling Robin: hatchling, fertilized eggs, unfertilized eggs Grackle: fledgling Chicken: unfertlized egg, hatchling, 3 weeks Quail (unknown specie): hatchling, 4 weeks Red-backed salamander: adult, slime rinsed off Mealworms: 1-inchers Grasshoppers (unknown specie) adult and subadult
whole prey refused as of now: Sardines: canned cooked Bait shop Minnows Earthworms Red-backed salamander WITHOUT the slime rinsed off (I'm sensing a texture pattern here!)
Captured bugs: Houseflies: bitten and left
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Post by Corvidophile on Jun 5, 2017 11:50:04 GMT -5
I just bought and chopped up a grocery store chicken for the first time in over a year, maybe over two years, and he STILL doesn't want it! He'll eat whole prey chicken, organs on their own, and he still is afraid of generic bone-in and bone-out peices of chicken. What the heck!
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Post by Corvidophile on Jun 9, 2017 18:15:30 GMT -5
Today I got six live chickens from Agway and butchered them. They were 4 weeks old, hatched May 10th. I plucked (I'd rather have fistfuls of feathers now than fingerfuls of feathers drifting out of his cage for a week!) and rinsed one and gave it to him, tore right into it. I sliced the breasts off one and ate them myself with dinner, and holy cow, this tastes so much stronger than any other chicken I've had. It tasted more like a duck, actually.
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Post by Corvidophile on Jul 12, 2019 17:14:42 GMT -5
He’s sick with presumed insulinoma and is just starting meds tonight, but he’s been refusing to eat anything but his favourite foods- young mice, eggs, and ground beef. This has been happening on and off for about a month now, a week of troubled eating and then a week of accepting other foods. I’ve bought Better In The Raw supplement to mix into the ground beef to use as the basic diet for now to keep things balanced for the foreseeable future. He likes the flavour and his poops are good on it.
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Post by Corvidophile on Aug 22, 2019 18:22:38 GMT -5
Still eating Better In The Raw as his main diet, and still won’t eat anything else but young mice and eggs. He actually devolved with the mice for a while- he’d eat just the head and shoulders of an adult mouse and then turn them around and eat off the feet and tail so I’d just have a disembodied butt left. Then he started only eating the head of an adult mouse four weeks of age or more, and a whole younger mouse. Then, he stopped eating the body of anything but less than three day old pinkies, and would only eat the head or sometimes just the TIP of the nose of anything with fur!
So I stopped with mice altogether for a month, let a generation age out, culled and donated 35 mice to a raptor rehabilitation center. Now I’ve got another batch mature enough to donate again at about five-six weeks old, but before giving them all away I thought what the heck, I’ll try again, and he ate one, a whole adult mouse about five weeks old! Trying again tonight.
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Post by abbeytheferret6 on Aug 23, 2019 7:45:48 GMT -5
How about squirrel? My neighbor is getting a bunch in his attic. A country boy, he eats them himself. He sent me one last night. I have fed squirrel the next day without freezing the 2 weeks (they say do that with wild game). However, I did not feed the organs until they were frozen for two weeks.
My husband's friend sent me a skinned copperhead snake(without the head)I just could not bring myself to feed it to my ferrets. It stayed in the freezer forever. A long time back a guy---who was from out West--- posted on the forum that he fed his ferrets a rattlenake (without head of course).
About the mice, how would he do if you snipped the belly and pulled out the gut? I take out the intestines and stomach, but I tried to feed mine with the stomach the other day-- somebody left it behind. Also, they do get tired of things if fed too close together, often.
Do you remove intestines of guinea pigs? I do--- and skin them. My male does really good on guinea pig and mice as far as stools. I like the ones that are for 7.99 a piece at Hare Today---I think they are a 1 -1 1/2 lbs. He does not do well on poultry which includes quail.
Nice of you to donate to the raptor center.
What container do you raise your mice in?
Oh---never feed slugs to your ferret(lungworms) Reason saying is that my Annabelle saw something moving when I brought her out for a walk ---to my horror she ate a teeny slug. If it moves she will eat it.
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Post by Corvidophile on Aug 24, 2019 7:53:57 GMT -5
Unfortunately he left the second mouse- just ate the face, part of tail, and feet. Fed him two day old pinkies and he ate those still. abbeytheferret6 I haven’t tried squirrel! I’d Like to eat one myself, too. I do not skin or gut mice, just present them whole. When I fed guinea pigs I tried ones a little bigger than fully grown rats, I don’t remember the weight category or price, but I did have to skin and gut them. It was a mess, I could never get the guts out cleanly, I always accidentally broke the intestines, so it dissuaded me from doing it to even smaller animals- maybe one day I’ll try! I raise mice in big plastic tubs that I saw the inner lid out and replace with hardware cloth hot glued down. They’re about 2’x1’x1’. I cut holes in the mesh and reinforced them with doorknob-supporting circles I got at Home Depot or somewhere similar to drop water bottles down through the top. The bedding is a bottom layer of alfalfa pellet horse food for aeration and scent control and a top layer of Carefresh, Box-o-Comfort, or similar for them to dig around in. I feed them Harlan Teklad formula 2018 (also goes by the name Envigo), plus a random assortment of safe dinner scraps, spinach, fruit, oats, sunflower seeds, stale bread. Thanks for the tip about slugs, I read that in the past but don’t regularly think about it. Hey, would cooked escargot be ok, do the lungworms die in cooked snails..? Never considered that!
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Post by Corvidophile on Feb 29, 2020 9:27:18 GMT -5
The only foods he’ll eat consistently now are ground beef and eggs, he’s become so choosy as he aged. I mix the ground beef with Better in the Raw ( www.knowbetterpetfood.com/products/better-in-the-raw-for-ferrets ) to make it nutritious enough to be a complete meal but I’m still bummed that he refuses anything else after being such an adventurous eater as a younger ferret. I still have my last batch of grown out mice in the freezer, I give him one occasionally but he just plays with it, bites the face, and leaves the rest. Because of his insulinoma I don’t want him to go hungry so I never leave him without regular meals, so I can’t try and wait him out. I think I’ll try grinding the mice myself and mixing them with Better in the Raw to give them a familiar taste to see if he’ll eat them that way, I know it’ll be a vitamin overload at first but I want to see if I can slowly slip him less and less adulterated ground mice. Need to buy a second meat grinder for this as I don’t want the one I use for myself mousey, haha.
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Post by Sherry on Feb 29, 2020 9:59:38 GMT -5
It's definitely worth a shot.
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Post by Corvidophile on Mar 16, 2020 9:38:06 GMT -5
Well, I ground about 40 mice and I never want to do that again, it kept backing up and dripping onto the floor and when I opened it up at the end it turned out to be because some tails got wound around the mechanism, it was a gore fest and I had to bleach half my kitchen from the spurting. If he ends up liking them I’ll buy preground.
He refused to eat pure mouse mince, even with salmon oil mixed in, so I’ve been sneaking it into his ground beef in small percentages. Still requires salmon oil to be mixed in to eat it, but we’re up to 1/3 mouse, 2/3 beef now! Slowly upping it every other meal.
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Post by abbeytheferret6 on Mar 16, 2020 11:10:20 GMT -5
Somebody loves her baby I have done several mouse soupies in my Bullet. Haven't tried grinding a pile though:)
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Post by Corvidophile on Mar 18, 2020 13:18:29 GMT -5
He ate 100% ground mouse yesterday! He left a little behind, obviously didn’t love it even with the salmon oil, but he ate it.
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