Switching 13 ferrets from Kibble to Raw/Prey

[Deleted]

Hi, 

Before I start I'd just like to say how fantastic this forum is, I've already got so much useful information from it but now I need to ask some specific questions, hopefully you'll be able to help ...


Over the past 2 weeks I've been switching my ferrets from a kibble diet to a raw/prey diet and so far everything is going well and I've been able to get rid of the kibble completely now but I do have a few questions.

I've made a meal plan based on this chart holisticferret60.proboards.com/thread/17989/balancing-frankenprey-diets-prey-grinds 

Monday	Whole Chicken*	Whole Chicken*
Tuesday	Whole Chicken*	Beef
Wednesday	Duck Neck	Pigeon
Thursday	Guinea pig/Rat	Quail
Friday	Duck Neck	Organ/Heart
Saturday	Wild Rabbit	Wild Rabbit
Sunday	Wild Rabbit	Chicken wings

*whole chicken includes feathers/head/organs etc.


I'm currently giving them meals of 500g (18 ounces) for all 13 which works out over a day of 75g (3 ounces) average per ferret which works out at 7.5% of the average body weight for the ferrets. 

Weight wise since I started on Raw/Prey all the ferrets have gained weight, however it's hard to tell if this is just the winter weight gain or due to the diet, I'm monitoring them weekly just to make sure they are doing ok. Is this weight gain something I should expect to see as they get a better diet, they are certainly more active recently.

So far everything seems to be going well but I do have a couple of questions I hope you can help with.

1) Does the menu I've got them on cover a sufficient amount of protein sources, I'm slightly concerned that with chicken,duck,quail and pigeon there is a lot of bird in the diet, is the Guinea Pig/Rat, Beef and Rabbit enough to counter that ?

2) I feed the ferrets when I leave for work at 4am and when I go to bed at 10pm as they are free roam and they do stash food (especially under the bed) so at the moment they have 500g (18 ounces) to last 18 hours and another 500g (18 ounces) to last 6 hours. Should I look at changing the amounts of each meal so the Morning meal is 750g (26 ounces) and the evening meal 250g (9 ounces), obviously if I do this it will mean I'll have to change the evening meat and organ/heart meals from once a week to twice a week to keep the proportions the same

Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated .

Dom

[Deleted]

Great work on creating your own transitioning thread. 
This is a great way to monitor the progress of the switch.
Another good idea would be to post weights and dangling photos of your ferrets then when you've fully transition you can look back and see the total difference it has made. Poop photos are also welcome. Since you'll be doing whole prey, the poops may sometimes have hair in them, I think we call those fuzzy poops. hahaha!

This forum is truly an incredible forum. Everyone here is very kind and helpful. The information has also been stored conveniently so it makes it sooooo easy to locate, once you get the hang of the forum set up. I'm sure you have though since you mentioned lurking. If you do require any assistance, don't hesitate to ask.
Questions are more than welcome, the more the better. It shows that you're responsible ferrent and really care for the overall well being of your ferrets. What ever questions you have, there will always be someone here who will be able to help if needed.

Over the past 2 weeks I've been switching my ferrets from a kibble diet to a raw/prey diet and so far everything is going well and I've been able to get rid of the kibble completely now but I do have a few questions.
Wow! You've done well by getting them completely off kibble. Usually getting the kibble out completely is the tough part of switching, but you've done well and the rest shouldn't be overly complicated. Just requires patience and persistence.

Monday Whole Chicken* Whole Chicken*
Tuesday Whole Chicken* Beef
Wednesday Duck Neck Pigeon
Thursday Guinea pig/Rat Quail
Friday Duck Neck Organ/Heart
Saturday Wild Rabbit Wild Rabbit
Sunday Wild Rabbit Chicken wings

*whole chicken includes feathers/head/organs etc.

Looks like a good variety to me. I'll tag bitbyter so he can look at this for you.

I'm currently giving them meals of 500g (18 ounces) for all 13 which works out over a day of 75g (3 ounces) average per ferret which works out at 7.5% of the average body weight for the ferrets.
Average male ferret can eat anywhere from 2-6 ounces per meal. whereas the female would have around 2 ounces give or take. Either way, it depends on the ferret, but it seems to be working out greatly for you. Do you know how much each ferret eats per meal?

Weight wise since I started on Raw/Prey all the ferrets have gained weight, however it's hard to tell if this is just the winter weight gain or due to the diet, I'm monitoring them weekly just to make sure they are doing ok. Is this weight gain something I should expect to see as they get a better diet, they are certainly more active recently.
It would more likely be winter weight since ferrets tend to firm up on a natural diet.
Good work by monitoring the weight. I do mine fortnightly (every 2 weeks). They may gain some weight at the start of a switch, but then will firm up (lose excess fat from kibble, and gain muscle) The fact that they are active is a great sign. It shows they're getting all the energy they need from the fresh food.

So far everything seems to be going well but I do have a couple of questions I hope you can help with.
1) Does the menu I've got them on cover a sufficient amount of protein sources, I'm slightly concerned that with chicken,duck,quail and pigeon there is a lot of bird in the diet, is the Guinea Pig/Rat, Beef and Rabbit enough to counter that ?
You have a good selection of proteins lined up and it's great you've included the Beef. Beef is high in vitamin B and Iron. Chicken is a common sensitivity among ferrets, so it would be great to limit the amount of chicken in a diet. I'll also mention,  In the chances that you find a ferret having symptoms for IBD, you would then need to try a protein elimination diet. I'll post the link here for information on that, it also talks about the different proteins so its a great read.

Here's a link for the topic on IBD: docs.google.com/document/d/1LzzYZuStKLVGrblgWbgTNC0WSBLCM0T-wUXmHuMvouU/edit
Here's a link for the topic on protein elimination:http://holisticferret60.proboards.com/thread/17731/protein-trial-elimination-diet-ferrets 



2) I feed the ferrets when I leave for work at 4am and when I go to bed at 10pm as they are free roam and they do stash food (especially under the bed) so at the moment they have 500g (18 ounces) to last 18 hours and another 500g (18 ounces) to last 6 hours. Should I look at changing the amounts of each meal so the Morning meal is 750g (26 ounces) and the evening meal 250g (9 ounces), obviously if I do this it will mean I'll have to change the evening meat and organ/heart meals from once a week to twice a week to keep the proportions the same
Oh wow! I think I asked if they were free roam, thats awesome!
Stashing, oh goodness, isn't it a hard job they make us do when we have to go check stash spots for meats, especially whole prey. ahahaha! I picked up what I thought was a piece of string the other day, and it turned out to be a mouse tail. (sigh gotta love them)  Whole prey can be left out for about 48 hours. Changing the amounts would really depend on your ferrets to be honest. I think keeping them half and half would be your best option.

[Heather]

I think you're doing fantastic and your meal plan is great. I do have one thing that you may want to consider. The one problem I ran into when feeding 18 ferrets was that I had some who would "unbalance" my hard work. These particular greedy guts would eat only organ meats or hearts or heads while short changing others. Lady B was my worst offender. Being the dominant sprite she would always get first pick and she would eat all the heads and the hearts. She hated liver and would leave that for the others. I like the whole prey ideal and it works very well for what I have right now (dozen ferrets with different play groups...hate the break up but it does make for much easier tracking). At the time when everyone free roamed, I would create a meal of organs and hearts. I wasn't as specific about it back then but it worked out to be about 1 meal a week which is basically what we do now in the general menu. I knew the ones who hated organ meats and fed them a ground mixture, that way everyone got the necessary amount
ciao

[Deleted]

If I wanted to limit the chicken like machan suggested would switching one of the meals to something like Mackerel be suitable (I know freshwater fish are recommended but the only 1 of those I can get is Roach but it comes in a 10kg box and I have limited freezer space) so that would reduce 1 of the whole chicken prey meals with a fish prey meal and then I can substitute the chicken wings for duck necks taking.

I also read on another thread that ferrets won't eat the coat and guts of a rabbit so the wild rabbit for 3 days is based on a 1-2kg rabbit (the ones I have seem to be about 1.7kg (60 ounces) ) , am I going to be more realistic giving that as just a meal for 1 day and adding in an extra extra quail or pigeon meal.

I'm also quite confused about where oxtail fits into the muscle/bone in meat scale, my ferrets seem to love it but I just don't know where it fits in to give them the balance they need (I'm guessing it counts as muscle because they don't really eat the bone and DW seems to prefer food that he can get his teeth into rather than just chunks of beef)

So the changes I'm thinking of making would be

Tuesday

Whole Chicken changes to Mackerel/Roach

Sunday

Wild Rabbit changes to Quail/Pigeon
Chicken wings changes to Duck/Turkey neck

[Deleted]

I think I may up the amount I'm feeding as well to start with, 1kg a day seems like it's enough for them but I'd rather have leftovers than hungry ferrets.

Yesterday they scoffed both their morning meal and evening in record time (chicken wings and beef - they aren't onto the new menu yet) so I had to give them some extra DOC's when I caught Biggie scooting around looking in all the stash spots for food ...