Whole prey grinds diet help

[ady]

I am planning to get 2 ferrets (haven't decided if they're gonna be both males or 1 male and 1 female yet) and i struggle a lot with understanding how to supplement balanced whole prey grinds or if they need to be supplemented at all because some people say even the "balanced grinds" may need to be supplemented with some raw meaty bones, heart, liver and other organs and others say complete balanced grinds don't need to be supplemented so it's very confusing to me. I would appreciate a lot if someone could give me an example on how i should supplement the bones, hearts, liver and the other organs or in which cases supplementing would be needed. And it would be much appreciated if someone could link complete balanced whole grinds (3 or 4 different proteins)

This is an example plan i made because i wanted to understand more of how meals work and i wanna know if the supplements are too much or not (i don't know if its needed to add gizzards when im feeding grinds daily so please tell me if its not needed) also the grinds are not stated because im not sure what will be available for order but if anyone will respond to this im hoping i could get some help with that too and what proteins i should order for a week

Monday :
am - rmb + small portion of grinds
pm - grinds

Tuesday :
am - grinds + eggs (1 per ferret)
pm - grinds

Wednesday :
am - rmb + small portion of grinds
pm - grinds

Thursday :
am - grinds + muscle (gizzards)
pm - grinds

Friday :
am - rmb + small portion of grinds
pm - grinds

Saturday :
am - grinds + eggs (1 per ferret)
pm - grinds

Sunday :
am - grinds + organ mix (liver, heart, other organ)
pm - grinds + organ mix (liver, heart, other organ)

If the grinds are too much for the bone-in days then for the pm or am meal i could feed only raw meaty bones instead of adding a little bit of grinds as well (not sure if i should feed the raw meaty bones at AM or PM so again it would be much appreciated if someone could tell me if bones are better fed during the day or at night) i also wanna apologize for my English, its not my first language but hopefully i made myself clear.😅

[Corvidophile]

The contents of your diet plan are theoretically fine, it all depends on what grinds you buy as to whether they need to be supplemented or not. The point of the supplementation is to get the whole diet to a 75-80% muscle meat, 10-15% bone, and 10% organ plan if the grinds don’t meet that requirement. Must also be 10% heart or tongue for the taurine content, and that 10% counts as muscle meat. And 5% liver, the liver counts as organ. So you could look at it like 10% heart or tongue, 65-70% any other muscle meat, 10-15% bone, 5% liver, 5% any other organ.

Also, I see you plan on feeding all the hearts and organs on one day-I wouldn’t do that, just to avoid diarrhea. Feed them more spaced out with grinds or raw meaty bones as the other meal for that day.

What country do you live in? Hate Today is a good site if you live in the US. Here’s an example of a perfect grind you don’t need to do anything to- whole mice. It’s considered a perfect grind because it contains the whole animal and is a natural prey of the polecat, making up a good percentage of their diet in the wild. hare-today.com/product/raw_ground/whole_carcass_ground_mouse_1_lb_fine_ground

Here’s an example of a grind that needs a little supplementation- ground alpaca that’s a little low in organs. Then to balance out the extra organs, throw in a little extra bone. Not much of each, just a half meal or whole meal per week will fix it. hare-today.com/product/raw_ground/ground_alpacabonesorganstripe_1_lb_fine_ground

Here are the rest of their ground products: hare-today.com/category/products_by_protein/ground

And they have whole prey items and singular organs for sale as well if you search under their Products tab up top to the left.

[ady]

I've done some more research on this and came across a thread on reddit ( source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ferrets/comments/7spmlm/raw_food_advice/) that is mainly about grinds and how to supplement if needed, someone suggested this for the organs ( hare-today.com/product/raw_ground/ground_chicken_organs_5_lb ) but it does not show how much of each organ is included so i might have to reach out to the company for that, and i also updated my meal plan before seeing your reply and id like to know if its better than my first one or if i should stick to the first.

This new meal plan i made is based on this ( holisticferretforum.com/natural-diet/raw-diet-the-meat-of-the-site/balancing-frankenprey-with-alternative-meals/ ) its the 7 alternative meal row because that's what they suggested though im not sure why it has to be the 7 alternative meal because i still didn't understand much of how ground meals need to be supplemented with heart/bone/liver/other organ, im really bad at math so i decided that buying the ground organs would be easier though, again, i don't know how many ounces id add in a meal of heart/bones/liver/other (depending on their days, i wont feed all of that in one day lol just to be clear), i don't know how much 10% heart,10% bones 5% liver and 5% other secreting organ means if id decide to buy hearts, bones and organs etc separately from a store instead of ordering ground organs or how to do the math but i thought I'd figure it along the way, if you could help with that it would make it so much easier for me to understand how this works. Anyway enough talk thats basically all im confused with and if i could get the answers for that i don't think id need ti know anything else for the grinds diet, by the way i live in EU so im not familiar with how math in the US is however im willing to learn how it works if its a must since i do have some friends there that could help me understand it, im extremely confused on what 1/2 or 1/4 means i know its dividing in half but (for example) i have no idea what 1/4 liver means in ounces or 1/2 this is one of the things thats really holding me back from learning how to balance unbalanced grinds,and i plan on moving there in maybe 2 years but finally here's my new plan

Monday :
am - grinds
pm - rmb + grinds

Tuesday :
am - grinds + rmb
pm - grinds + spoonful of ground organs

Wednesday :
am - grinds + eggs ( 1 egg per ferret )
pm - rmb + grinds

Thursday :
am - grinds
pm - spoonful of ground organs + grinds

Friday :
am - grinds
pm - grinds

Saturday :
am - grinds
pm - rmb + grinds

Sunday :
am - grinds + spoonful of ground organs
pm - grinds + eggs ( 1 egg per ferret )

I will not be giving that many ground organ meals (or each organ individually if i dont have the ground chicken organs), same for the raw meaty bones, if the diet is balanced enough i wont be giving that many bone meals, probably just one per week like you said, thats more of an example meal that doesnt have enough bone added in the grinds and not enough organs

[Corvidophile]

When working with percentages for frankenprey, it’s easiest to start with a total you’re planning on buying at a time- say, you want ten pounds of food- and break it down from there. So you’d order one pound of hearts, half a pound of livers, half a pound of other organs, six and a half pounds of bone-in meat cuts (like thighs, wings) and one and a half pounds of muscle meat. If you’re lucky you can find a local butcher to buy hearts and organs from, as the rest can typically be found anywhere.

The 1/2 and 1/4 means literally that much of the food unit. They’re both referring to chicken hearts and livers cut with a knife. I don’t remember how much they weigh off the top of my head and I don’t have them around to do so as I currently feed solely grinds.