Daily feeding/ Organ grind mix

[petparent]

I was wondering about making an organ grind and feeding that in the AM and then rotate muscle or bone in in the evening?  In the wild they would eat whole prey which would be a complete diet but since the animals they would be eating are small maybe I could try to recreate the same amount of organ meat say a mouse or rat would have in them.

I know the ratios of the organs would be small to compensate for the preys size of what they would normally eat.

Wouldn't that make a complete balanced daily diet for ferrets?

[LindaM]

Now that really depends.. here's what worries me.

How are you going to make sure it is balanced? If that's all they get for a whole meal, it won't be enough food, and if you give enough of it to be enough food, good Lord but that's going to be an unbalanced and frankly dangerous diet. In a whole prey diet, they eat the whole animal, it is balanced, not simply the organs. If you feed 7 meals of organs, you are well exceeding the 10% of diet needing to be organs, that's only 1.5 meals of organs in the week. They also really don't get that much muscle meat either.

If it's a whole animal grind.. that would be balanced, not just an organ grind.

Secondly, why the grind? Why grinds at all? Grinds are great as an introduction to actual chunks of raw meat or whole prey animals. Ferrets need to crunch bones to keep their teeth clean and have optimal GI tract health. Grinds will just continue to build tartar and plaque on teeth and thus you'd need to brush several times a week to keep them clean.

So I have to ask, what do you want to be the final diet outcome for your ferrets? Frankenprey? Whole Prey? Mixed diet of both? Commercial Raw diet?

[Deleted]

Nov 28, 2017 17:36:51 GMT -5 LindaM said:

Now that really depends.. here's what worries me.

How are you going to make sure it is balanced? If that's all they get for a whole meal, it won't be enough food, and if you give enough of it to be enough food, good Lord but that's going to be an unbalanced and frankly dangerous diet. In a whole prey diet, they eat the whole animal, it is balanced, not simply the organs. If you feed 7 meals of organs, you are well exceeding the 10% of diet needing to be organs, that's only 1.5 meals of organs in the week. They also really don't get that much muscle meat either.

If it's a whole animal grind.. that would be balanced, not just an organ grind.

Secondly, why the grind? Why grinds at all? Grinds are great as an introduction to actual chunks of raw meat or whole prey animals. Ferrets need to crunch bones to keep their teeth clean and have optimal GI tract health. Grinds will just continue to build tartar and plaque on teeth and thus you'd need to brush several times a week to keep them clean.

So I have to ask, what do you want to be the final diet outcome for your ferrets? Frankenprey? Whole Prey? Mixed diet of both? Commercial Raw diet?

That’s interesting, I plan to feed a balanced mince, would that cause problems with their teeth as well? bearing in mind I am planning to feed a few “unground” bone in meals a couple of times a week. 

[Sherry]

If they will actually eat the whole bone meals, then their teeth should be okay.

[LindaM]

@sw33teuphoria The grinds will do nothing to keep teeth clean at all, but if you include some regular bone-in meals (please balance grinds with Frankenprey using the chart below) those will help clean the teeth. Like Sherry said, just make sure they eat the bones in them, and not just scissor off meat or stash them and not eat at all.

holisticferretforum.com/natural-diet/raw-diet-the-meat-of-the-site/balancing-frankenprey-with-alternative-meals/

[Gg]

Nov 29, 2017 15:00:32 GMT -5 LindaM said:

@sw33teuphoria The grinds will do nothing to keep teeth clean at all, but if you include some regular bone-in meals (please balance grinds with Frankenprey using the chart below) those will help clean the teeth. Like Sherry said, just make sure they eat the bones in them, and not just scissor off meat or stash them and not eat at all.

holisticferretforum.com/natural-diet/raw-diet-the-meat-of-the-site/balancing-frankenprey-with-alternative-meals/

Hey Linda, I know this is an older thread but I stumbled across it and have a question about the balanced frankenprey/alternative meals menu you posted. I'm at the stage where Momo is sick of eating soup and loves his quail wings but he's hating cut up thigh, heart and liver. If all he'll eat is wing dipped in soup, is there a specific recipe I should be using to balance all the bone he's getting? In the meantime, I could use some good tips on getting him to eat some solids

[Gg]

Also, could I ask you for some help with reading the chart? I know it's broken down but I can't wrap my head around the structure lol

[LindaM]

Hey Gina, I'm gonna tag FireAngel for you to help with your questions since this directly related to your ongoing switch that she is mentoring you in. Right now she has the best idea of what is happening with your ferrets' diet and will be the one to offer the best help with this. I'm sure she won't mind explaining how to understand how the Balance Chart works either.

[Gg]

Yes! She's amazing and has been a giant help on the transition but our schedules are usually not linked up and I'm having an issue with a ferret who is sick of soup at the moment and I wasn't sure what to do so figured I'd take a leap to try frankenprey and stumbled upon this thread when looking for additional help.