Imprinting on food - How does it work?

[daddywarbots]

I have a question about how olfactory imprinting works. I'm getting my first ferrets soon so I want to know how their minds work about this.

Is it a one-time thing that happens with babies? Or can adults also become fixated if fed a limited diet?

If we introduce variety and convince them to eat it are we making them adventurous eaters or are we adding specific things to the whitelist so to speak?

[Heather]

LOL...you're asking how a ferret mind works
No all kidding aside, most ferrets become food imprinted by the time they're about 9 months of age. For some it's earlier (we've been seeing Marsals kits imprinted at 6 months). Is this a left over preservation instinct? Maybe, but it doesn't serve us or them very well when doing the whole switch. Some ferrets seem to be more easily imprinted than others. I've had rescues who are elderly switch overnight and fought for months with ferrets barely pushing a year to take on whole meats and foods. Sherry had a wee lad who despite being switched to raw (a real pain)if he was not fed a food regularly would have to be switched to that food every time it was introduced. Adding a novel protein as a switch just wasn't done with that boy. This imprinting is one of the reasons why we try and get people to feed more than just 3 different proteins (this is to cover nutrients missed from one protein to the next) and suggest to introduce as many as can be located. This makes it much easier when having to change suppliers. I've had ferrets who refused to eat their mice or rats because they'd become imprinted on a specific supplier
ciao

[daddywarbots]

Thank you so much!

It seems like it varies a bit. I'll just have to see what mine are like when I get them home.
They're rescues, 1.5 year old girls from Marshall farms and they have been fed Marshalls kibble like so many of them are.

[Sherry]

It really does vary from ferret to ferret, but those who have the widest palate appear to be ones who are introduced to a very wide variety while young. I have also had ferrets who were very allergic to a particular protein, so cage mates obviously couldn't have that protein either. Trying to reintroduce it after the one with an allergy passed has been hit and miss at best. I will have to do a complete reintroduction at some point.
And it is my Boris Heather was speaking of That lad took 6 weeks when first switching to admit raw wasn't actually poison (headwall) After that, if he didn't have a protein for a month I had to start him on a puree of it all over again. Didn't matter if it had been a favourite for months- if he didn't taste it for a month he suddenly thought it was poison again
On the other hand- I have had older ferrets switch themselves in a day to raw, and accept basically anything I put in front of them!