Feeding...together or seperate

[hayley]

Hi

As I move my fuzzbutts to a raw diet, what’s the best approach to feeding. At present they just eat out of the same bowl and seem to do fine like that.

Would it be better for me to feed them separately?

I am thinking it would make things easier as far as getting a feel for how much both of them are eating etc, but am worried that isolating them for feeding might be a bit difficult with their current cage set up etc (unless one is ok eating by their litter tray).

What do you think is best?

[pegleg]

I feed all three of mine together. If one feels like dragging a hunk of meat or two away, they are free to do so. Sometimes there'll be some squabbling over choice bits, or if it's one big piece they will often end up in a tug match as everyone tries to get their own, but really that's natural and healthy behavior Long as they aren't drawing blood on one another, let them squabble over the food. Builds character.
Just figure out what each of them roughly needs, add it up, and put it in the bowl. There should always be a few mouthfuls left over. It might take some trial and error to find the right weight. I personally feed roughly 7oz per day right now. Now, in winter my amount was 10oz.
I also weigh weekly. If they are maintaining their good weight on what I feed, I call it good

[LindaM]

Overall, I feed my lot together. But I also do separate bowls on some days, and a single huge dish on others. It really depends on what style you are planning to feed and how your ferrets end up eating, for me it's no issue if my ferrets drag their meat around their lair (ferret room), but for some people it can be a problem so instead they hook meat onto shower hooks and attach to their cage or inside a feeding den.

When you have multiple ferrets feeding together can have some challenges, like making sure everyone is eating what the need when offering a meal of for example, hearts and organs for that one meal in the week where it has half of each... to counteract that my lot get their hearts, organs, and heart+organ meal in the form of a puree. Good luck picking out a favorite in soup form! You don't have to do that if you are confident yours won't pick out favorites, but you'd need to keep and eye to make sure it doesn't happen when you have more than one ferret.
Another thing that happens is they may want to eat in privacy and thus drag off their meat everywhere else (unless you use the hook method), in which case I highly suggest building everyone a feeding den to peacefully eat inside of. Feeding dens can be a cardboard box with an entrance cut out, which you toss as they get nasty, or even a plastic storage container with an entrance, which you can just wash when it gets bad.

Some food squabbles are totally natural though, because "The piece the other ferret got has got to be much tastier than mine, so I want that one instead!" It can be incredibly funny to watch sometimes. My lot of five honestly don't do it often though and there's never been any harm done, though I do check in on them if I hear anything or see it occurring.

If it is any help to you, back when I had just two ferrets and did my first switch to raw when feeding in the cage, I used a separate bowl for each but fed them on the same shelf, and both had no issue eating only from their own bowl. I just found it a bit easier to figure out who was eating how much with the separate bowls, especially at the start of a switch when it's a bit harder to figure out what each ferret's average amount of food eaten is. Much easier to weigh and monitor.

[hayley]

Thanks for the advice!

At the moment when I do give them some meat typically my boy will grab some take it to the lower level of the cage and at it then come back and grab some more, while Gypsy just eats out of the original bowl.

I think I will try seperate bowls to start and see how it goes, hopefully making it easier for me to keep track of what they are eating and that they are both getting what they need.

My only thing is when they are eating in the same cage they will probably kind of go between each bowl maybe eating a bit of each. So won’t be super precise for measuring quantities.

Oh well better to start and figure it out as I go.

[abbeytheferret6]

I feed mine together. Like my Abbey was a heart piggie, so I put xtra hearts in their plate. I do have a mouse stasher(my blaze). I would put out a mouse for everyone and she would start stashing them. So I just told myself not to worry about it.  The others will find them when they get hungry. Stashing is in their room. I like closing the door when they eat(most of the time). But i have hunted them down and put them back in plate on occasions.

[Sherry]

I just toss the food down and let them squabble it out if they choose