Adding ground prey to diet. Questions

[Molly]

Hello all,

I have 3 ferrets who all enjoy the raw diet. I saw a lady on youtube prepping meals. She ordered ground duck, rabbit and mutton (ground with organs + bone). From what I heard in the video, she feeds ground meats with hearts few times a week. 

Is there a special rule to follow when feeding ground prey? Can I just use ground meats w/ bone to replace the days/nights I feed muscle meats? Whenever I feed goat or beef, Im not certain the ferrets are getting enough bone since the bones are so large. My ferrets devour quail with no problem.

Any advice/help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[LindaM]

Yes, absolutely, if you are still following a regular Frankenprey diet in the week. Once you bring in alternative meals such as grinds or whole prey, you need to make sure they are balanced along with your Frankenprey.
Use this chart:
holisticferret60.proboards.com/thread/17989/balancing-frankenprey-diets-prey-grinds

The chart assumes you will use 100% balanced grinds, so if you do so, please do use the ones that say "whole ground animal".
As for beef and goat, their bones are much too dense for ferrets to eat and will end up ignored/avoided, so they cannot count as bone-in meals. Please follow the example list of edible bones from here:
holisticferret60.proboards.com/thread/146/meat-bone-organ-weekly-menu

Keep in mind with grinds, unless you still have a decent amount of bone-in meals during the week, you may need to brush your ferrets' teeth so plaque and tartar don't accumulate as grinds do not provide the cleaning effect that crunching through bones does.