Easiest kibble-raw transition ever?
Sept 8, 2023 1:24:56 GMT -5
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Corvidophile, caitmonster, and 2 more like this
Post by certifiednutzo on Sept 8, 2023 1:24:56 GMT -5
A few weeks ago, I became determined to get our little business off of kibble, and on to real meat.
We have the full range of fur snakes here, from petite to huge, kit to old man, scary-smart to total smooth-brain, nap all day to zoomzoomzoom. But every single one of them was totally hooked on kibble, zero interest in meat or eggs or anything that wasn't kibble or salmon oil.
We were about to move, and going full raw during a move sounded awful, so we settled on Stella & Chewy's freeze dried chicken morsels for cats. The ferrets were not impressed immediately. But I crushed some of the S&C into dust (easily done by hand), mixed some salmon oil into their kibble to make it a little sticky and extra tasty, and sprinkled the S&C on top. They ate that up! After just a few days of adding more and bigger pieces of S&C, moistening it with water once it was more than just dust, we were able to cut the kibble out completely!
We still wanted them on raw meat though! Stella & Chewy's is pretty expensive. We were going through two $45 bags every ten days! (Petco pretty much always has a sale running on it, though.) So once we were settled in the new place, we looked to this forum for what to do. We were all set to start with soup, as that's basically what they've been eating for weeks now with the rehydrated S&C. But when we went to prepare their first raw meal last night, I thought, what the heck? Let's just smash up and chop one chicken wing, and see what they do with it. And it was a complete success! Aside from some funny looks from our sassy girl, there were no objections. Within a minute or two, I had gotten to see each ferret successfully eat a piece, and they quickly cleaned the plate.
For some reason, this chicken only came with a liver, so we added that to some breast meat tonight, and they ate it just fine. We'll have to find some hearts and hopefully other organs later this week. Then the last real test will be adding in other proteins!
I very much attribute our quick and easy success to having used Stella & Chewy's in the middle! It was a breeze to move to it from kibble, and it gave our ferrets a taste for raw chicken before we ever had to touch actual raw meat! I'd definitely recommend this approach to anyone who is feeling intimidated by the whole transition process.
We have the full range of fur snakes here, from petite to huge, kit to old man, scary-smart to total smooth-brain, nap all day to zoomzoomzoom. But every single one of them was totally hooked on kibble, zero interest in meat or eggs or anything that wasn't kibble or salmon oil.
We were about to move, and going full raw during a move sounded awful, so we settled on Stella & Chewy's freeze dried chicken morsels for cats. The ferrets were not impressed immediately. But I crushed some of the S&C into dust (easily done by hand), mixed some salmon oil into their kibble to make it a little sticky and extra tasty, and sprinkled the S&C on top. They ate that up! After just a few days of adding more and bigger pieces of S&C, moistening it with water once it was more than just dust, we were able to cut the kibble out completely!
We still wanted them on raw meat though! Stella & Chewy's is pretty expensive. We were going through two $45 bags every ten days! (Petco pretty much always has a sale running on it, though.) So once we were settled in the new place, we looked to this forum for what to do. We were all set to start with soup, as that's basically what they've been eating for weeks now with the rehydrated S&C. But when we went to prepare their first raw meal last night, I thought, what the heck? Let's just smash up and chop one chicken wing, and see what they do with it. And it was a complete success! Aside from some funny looks from our sassy girl, there were no objections. Within a minute or two, I had gotten to see each ferret successfully eat a piece, and they quickly cleaned the plate.
For some reason, this chicken only came with a liver, so we added that to some breast meat tonight, and they ate it just fine. We'll have to find some hearts and hopefully other organs later this week. Then the last real test will be adding in other proteins!
I very much attribute our quick and easy success to having used Stella & Chewy's in the middle! It was a breeze to move to it from kibble, and it gave our ferrets a taste for raw chicken before we ever had to touch actual raw meat! I'd definitely recommend this approach to anyone who is feeling intimidated by the whole transition process.
