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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2016 22:06:27 GMT -5
@morgan2247 - She took to the cgh no problems, she didn't eat a lot of it (she tried stashing what she didn't eat), but she ate quite a bit of beef this morning so I'm guessing that's why. I start getting paid in September, finally, so finances will be a little better after that. I hope I didn't come off as not willing to spend the money - I'll definitely buy her the meal meats (and anything else) she needs, just got to make sure I have all my bases covered...The other proteins I can get at the health food store are all pretty expensive (to me anyway! I've never really dealt with buying meat like this before so I wouldn't know), so tomorrow...I might buy lamb shoulder and also another protein to have in the freezer when she gets used to the lamb. As for organs...do I need to have organs from several different proteins as well? I have beef kidney and liver (and heart), I can get beef tongue if I couldn't find the hearts. I still have chicken liver, but I won't know if I can use it again until we try her one more time on chicken, right? I was under the impression that as long as they got their needed 'doses' of liver, another organ, and heart, it didn't matter what animal it came from I'm guessing now that the organs need to come from different animals for more variety? If she doesn't want more that's fine. Just keep it in the cage with her. No you didn't come off anything like that. I just know how it is to be tight on money. I don't want you to stress out over prices when we are still in the switching phase. No you don't have to have different proteins for organs. As long as the organs are secreting organs then she should be fine. I get beef tongue or heart and beef liver and pork kidney those are my organs. Though my little Shelby is really allergic to chicken I have fed her chicken liver or chicken eggs and not had a problem. I beleive it's how they process it that doesn't agree with her tummy. How about Sunday morning you try Piper on an organ meal do half liver and half kidney. If she eats for example two ounces in the morning then give her one ounce liver and one ounce kidney.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2016 22:17:17 GMT -5
I have a friend coming to visit tomorrow and I'm going to see if I can rope her into helping me take pictures of Piper since I realise it's been a little while since the last ones I took on her first switch day. I know she's only been on her new diet for almost two weeks now, but her coat feels incredible. She's just a completely different ferret to what I brought home, just as everyone has said about their switched fuzzbutts I do have a small side question - Piper has days where she doesn't sneeze at all, days where she sneezes once or twice, and then days where she's sneezing whenever she's up and about (alternating quiet and loud sneezing). My apartment is generally very clean, no dust or anything...what's causing this? Sometimes she'll even be lying in her cage and I hear a loud sneeze? You can always scruff her with one hand and take a quick pic with the other to get dangling photos so we can see the shape of her. My ferrets do this. I feel sometimes they get hairs in their nose either when out and about or while sleeping. They are like humans. There's days where all I do is sneeze and other days I don't at all. Do you have air fresheners in the apartment? That could be upsetting her.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2016 22:26:11 GMT -5
If she's acting fine pooping, eating all of that then more than likely she will be okay.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2016 22:30:30 GMT -5
Good to know! So far her menu is like this: Friday AM: Beef Stew Chunks (ate ~2oz)Friday PM: CGH wings (ate a little, leaving the rest in cage)Saturday AM: CGH wings? (or perhaps beef stew chunks?)Saturday PM: Try Lamb shoulder outright (go to lamb in beef soup if refusing)Sunday AM: Organ meal Sunday PM: ...CGH wing? Beef soup? Beef stew chunks? I realise that because I don't have proper bone-in meals for her yet, that I can only offer CGH or soup for balance... It will be fine for now. Have you tried pork? Do the gch on Sunday night. Let me know how poops look with gch tonight.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2016 22:38:56 GMT -5
Not so much of an angle try for straight out so that you can see her belly. You will see that a ferret should be tubular. Piper is a baby so her tummy is still round but when she goes into her summer coat next year she should look tubular. Not round and definitely not like an hour glass either where you can see her ribs.
Hmmmm try the on Monday just because you did start her on the gch and I want to see what her poops look like on that.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2016 22:45:08 GMT -5
Also the scruffing part some are easier than others. My old lady doesn't have much of a scruff and she's not fat. Some ferret are just like that.
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Post by Aftershock on Aug 5, 2016 23:04:27 GMT -5
Yeah, hurricanekatt put my menu in to heather to get approved and heather mentioned that CGH is a juvenile animal, so I'm having to switch my menu around since my main has been CGH. It was something that was overlooked because not many people use it as a main out of it being more expensive, so it is generally fed as an occasional. Heather is on my Facebook I will message her. Thanks for bringing that to my attention no one ever said anything about it. I haven't seen it on the forum in threads. I had no idea either, since the only thing I end up seeing about CGH is that of the ferret is allergic to chicken to try it. My boys preferred it to chicken to be honest, not to mention that they eat the bones like champs. So I was happy to have it as a main bone in, but now I have to switch my menu up again.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2016 23:08:38 GMT -5
Heather is on my Facebook I will message her. Thanks for bringing that to my attention no one ever said anything about it. I haven't seen it on the forum in threads. I had no idea either, since the only thing I end up seeing about CGH is that of the ferret is allergic to chicken to try it. My boys preferred it to chicken to be honest, not to mention that they eat the bones like champs. So I was happy to have it as a main bone in, but now I have to switch my menu up again. My kids love quail and they have wonderful poops on it. You could use that as a main bone in meal as well.
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Post by Aftershock on Aug 5, 2016 23:13:46 GMT -5
I actually managed to get some duck and a whole chicken today! I'm in a similar issue as piperskeeper with the small town not having good options for bone in meats. We sadly have no Asian markets around, and organs have been a pain to find.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2016 23:32:27 GMT -5
I actually managed to get some duck and a whole chicken today! I'm in a similar issue as piperskeeper with the small town not having good options for bone in meats. We sadly have no Asian markets around, and organs have been a pain to find. I actually live in a really small place too. No Asian markets nothing. So I make a budget of 150 dollars for hare today and I order everything I need. I do it about once a month. I have 5 ferrets they eat a lot of food so it's about that month every month. But that's including 60 dollars in shipping.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2016 13:34:25 GMT -5
Piper took to the CGH quickly and there were no problem stools whatsoever! They weren't seedy, weren't watery/mucousy. I ended up giving her lamb last night and this morning and she took right to the chunks and her stools still look fine. The only thing different was that yesterday she ended up eating some cloth from a toy she had and I found the cloth in her stool, so I did the blockage protocol with her last night and no more cloth came out. Her menu looks like this: Friday AM: Beef Stew Chunks (ate ~2oz) Friday PM: CGH wings (ate a little, left the rest in cage) Saturday AM: CGH wings (ate all, incl bone) Saturday PM: Lamb Shoulder chunks (ate all ~55g) Sunday AM: Lamb Shoulder chunks (53g) Sunday PM: CGH wing or Organ meal? Because I did a switch around and tried her on the lamb (I'm very sorry if this was too quick, her stools looked good and I just wanted to try her on the lamb) should I give her an organ meal tonight? On a separate note, a contact has located turkey necks and quail. They've found a place to order duck necks and they're going to call a specialty butcher in that town on Monday. So as it stands she would have beef, lamb, turkey, quail, deer (once I introduce it), pork (once I introduce it again) and perhaps duck necks. I still need to try her one more time on the chicken. I'm looking at ordering rabbit, goat, and mutton grinds from Hare Today but I'm not 100% sure on that yet. Awesome! She sounds like she is doing well and she has stopped being so picky! Wonderful! Please don't apologize! If you wanted to try her on those that's fine! Sounds like she's doing well with those proteins. You can try an organ meal tonight that won't be bad. If she doesn't take to it at first you can just mix some beef with it. Sounds like you are going to have a lot of proteins and that's good. The more she has the more vitamins and nutrients are covered from different animals.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2016 17:31:53 GMT -5
If she has having loose stools you can add some egg shell powder to some of her muscle meats. But if her stools are fine then I wouldn't worry about it. She can have 7 to 9 bone in meals a week. So while you wait if you feel you need to add some into the muscle meat that's fine. Just don't go over board.
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