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Post by ferretmamaintraining on Jul 13, 2017 10:24:47 GMT -5
My husband and I are trying to figure out how to feed raw with our work schedules. The evening meals and weekends would be easy, but we aren't sure how to work on mornings. I've seen that they need two hours before you take away the meat they haven't eaten? That would mean waking up at 3am to get them fed before we leave for work? How do you manage a feeding with a time crunch??? My husband and I work the same schedule. Leaving the house at about 5am and returning home by 4.
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Post by LindaM on Jul 13, 2017 13:22:43 GMT -5
You mean between offering raw and offering kibble, correct?
If you are feeding a raw menu, eg. Frankenprey or Whole Prey, or even just Commercial, it's not that hard. Most of us feed only 2 meals in the day, morning and evening, unless you're a Whole Prey feeder, as they can get away with even a single meal depending on the prey given. But we also do two other things, leave the food out until the next mealtime so the ferrets can eat whenever they feel like it (they might have some food but not eat all and later snack on the remainders), and also feed enough so that there could be a bite or so left by the time the next mealtime arrives.
If you are doing a partial diet of kibble and raw, it's substantially harder, and part of the reason I stopped doing a partial diet and went full raw in the first place, too time-consuming and too stressful. If you're in the transitioning stage, your best hope is to push them along until you can get them to eat raw willingly by themselves, and it get's so much easier.
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Post by LindaM on Jul 13, 2017 20:36:48 GMT -5
EDIT: Your response seemed to have vanished, but I hope this helps answer some of your concerns.
The start might be shaky for you guys at first, as it can often require some sitting with them and feeding with a spoon to get them used to the tastes of raw and new proteins as you progress. But once they're fully on raw, that shouldn't be a problem in the slightest. And if you're concerned about the condition of the raw in that time, many of us leave raw out for that long, if not somewhat more depending on the raw we give and the temperature of your home.
Here is a time-frame for how long each type of raw can remain out:
Soups: 6-8 hours
Grinds: 8-12 hours
Chunks: 10-24 hours (depending on size eg. the bigger the chunks are, the longer they'll last)
Bone-in Meats: 12-24 hours (again, depending on size)
Whole Prey: up to 48 hours
You can try to see how it goes for now by offering raw in the evenings and working with them getting used to it during that time when you have more time to spare, it might just take a little longer to get them used to the raw compared to being able to offer it more persistently overall, but I don't see why it couldn't work either.
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Post by ferretmamaintraining on Jul 13, 2017 22:44:50 GMT -5
Hi Linda!
Sorry about that comment getting deleted, I was going to rewrite it and then our new baby Porter pulled the top off of the cats water fountain and was snorkeling. They only stop when they are sleeping!
I really appreciate all of the info! I had been reading somewhere to take the meat had to be taken away after two hours and I was worried we would need to wake up at 3am to make sure we took meat away by the time we leave for work at 5.
Both our fuzzies are Marshall ferrets, so we definitely want to make sure they have the best possible chance at a long and healthy life. I just looked at our kibbles after reading your other post about kibble ingredients - the second ingredient is potatoes! Ack!
Our new girl is around 12 weeks old maybe, hard to tell when you get her from Petco. Our first one is a year and change.
Well, knowing that we could keep them fed in the morning makes raw sound like a realistic option. Now I just need to figure out where to put the kibble for my 9-year-old arthritic cat where two little weasels can't get it...
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Post by LindaM on Jul 13, 2017 23:24:28 GMT -5
No, you don't need to take it away when doing the full raw diet. What you may have heard was what you need to do when feeding both kibble and raw. Those two cannot be fed in a sitting together, because it will cause a bacterial overgrowth in their gut and you'd need to take them to the vet for antibiotics to fix it. So we advise to take kibble away a few hours before offering raw, and only putting the kibble back a few hours after raw had been offered.
Which is why I mentioned that it might be easier for you guys to introduce raw in the evenings instead with your schedules.
Your new girl should switch in a jiffy at that age, have you tried offering her a raw soupie? She should take to it like white on rice, lol. After that you can quickly graduate her to slivers, chunks and bone-in meals. Kits switch easily, and will often even skip some steps of the transition, compared to the older ones who need more work and will take a gradual switch.
I switched my ferrets over to raw while my cat still ate kibble (they shared a mix of high-end kibbles), and they simply lost interest in it and left the kibble alone when they got o raw. But it can go the other way as well, where the kibble makes it harder to switch them as they will keep trying to revert to it. Ever think about offering your cat a wet only diet, or raw diet as well? Cat's are also obligate carnivores and are usually very dehydrated on kibble, as carnivores get their moisture from their food. Carnivores shouldn't ever actually get kibbles (and those same concerns about peas and sweet potatoes in kibbles apply to cats). My cat has been doing so much better on his wet-only diet, and we're trying to get him onto eating raw right now but he's pretty stubborn, lol.
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