You are completely fine! Tonight will be great!
This way you can prepare to feed Blaze extra today.
An ounce and a half actually isn't terrible for just day feeding for her. I'd definitely take the kibble away tonight. When you put soup out for them tonight, you want to try to put out an approximate of what they have been eating during the day. The goal with them eating on their own is doing two feedings, one in the morning, one at night. You will know that they have enough to eat when you come back to feed them again and there are a few bites leftover.
Also!
MINI LESSON TIME!As a new ferrent, you are now on poop duty! (giggle) Our little fuzzies poop can tell us a lot about their specific dietary needs and how they are feeling.
On a raw diet, their poop generally varies from protein to protein (this is why we ask what their poop looks like fairly often.
) Occasionally there will be a random, odd poop and nothing to worry about. Introducing new proteins can make for some weird poops too. So, if you ever feel nervous about what is coming out of your ferret ask, are they eating anything new? How many times has this happened? What does it smell like?
Back to the poops themselves, I mentioned they can tell about your ferrets individual dietary needs,
too much bone in their diet will cause seedy, dry looking poops, and loose ones mean they need more bone. Poops after an organ meal will be loose and dark colored from all that blood rich food, and they can smell a bit. Organs themselves smell a little too (I seriously hate the smell of liver :puke: ) so it makes sense.
Here's a
poop chart!
Because organ meals can make loose poops, we feed a bone in meal after to even everything out, for example, I feed Wednesday am: Heart, and follow up Wednesday pm: duck wing/thigh/neck/spine.
This leads to another point I would like to make; the detox phase.
Switching a ferret over to a raw diet starts with detoxing for 2-3 weeks (this can last up to 5 as each ferret is different) and during this detox you may notice some pretty different poops with some odd smells. This is just their body pushing out kibble toxins and adjusting to the wider variety and higher nutrients in their current diet. I promise this won't last forever! As you continue to feed raw, the smell will go down, the poops will be smaller, and they won't be as weird looking.
This leads to a couple of effects of raw:
Higher energy/ energy levels even out
Super soft coats!
And possibly
grape tail!
Grape tail (their tails smell like grape Kool-Aid) can happen to raw fed ferrets, and it can take a few weeks to a few months (so don't be disappointed if it doesn't happen right off the bat). It is pretty exciting to smell for the first time! The smell also comes and goes.
Their raw food is safe to leave out! Guidelines:
Soup: 6-8 hours
Grinds: 8-12 hours
Chunks: 10-24 hours depending on the size (the bigger the chunks, the longer they last)
Bone in meats: 12-24 hours, again depending on the size
Whole prey: up to 48 hours
Also, another mini quiz!
Last quiz we touched on taurine, how much of a taurine supplement do you give per ferret?
Why do we feed raw over cooked bones?