Home made grind

[soren7nova]

So, I'm looking into switching to raw for my ferrets but don't think I could keep up with their meals like I've seen some in here say as the last step, but got inspired by raw pre made diets and would it be ok to grind up all the meat they will eat for the week and add in semi crushed or whole bones as a topper rather than giving whole cuts to them? I'm a real newbie and my oldest is almost 1 yr old, so I don't want to do anything that would harm them long term. For reference, I would add
55 oz of muscle from chicken, beef, duck, and rabbit including some gizzard
7.8 oz heart, organ(half liver), and have the bone separated to help with their teeth. If I find they don't eat the bone separated I will grind it with the rest and brush

[Corvidophile]

Yes, you may feed them home made grinds long term. You basically take the soup recipe and alter it a little so the liver is half the organ source and another rotating organ is the other half. You can use brain, lungs, spleen, or kidney as examples, but note that kidney is almost the same nutritionally as liver. Here’s the soup recipe and instructions on how to conveniently freeze it into portions. holisticferretforum.com/natural-diet/raw-diet-the-meat-of-the-site/raw-soup-recipe/

It doesn’t mention on the soup page, but your muscle meat should be between 15% and 20% fat for long term feeding. If you’re buying ground meat it usually says on the package the fat percentage, if you’re buying whole cuts you’ll have to learn to eyeball it in the store and choose cuts of meat that have enough fat.

As for bone, you’re gonna want to serve meat-on chunks. A naked bone isn’t very appealing to them to eat and dries out quickly, and once it dries out it becomes hard and splintery, which is dangerous. The meat on it keeps it moist. Chicken necks, backs and ribs are good and can usually be gotten from butchers cheaply as soup making fodder. Chicken wings are a much enjoyed source of ferret sized bones you can find anywhere, but they generally won’t be able to eat the humerus, it’s too hard. Bone should be 10-15% of the final diet. The recipe linked above works out to that much in powdered bone meal.

If you’re going to be grinding the bone into the mix, you’ll need to buy a strong meat grinder for it (looking at at least $300, most of the better ones $500+). Bone meal is a saner option to start out with, and yeah, you’ll have to brush teeth, but you should get used to feeding grinds made with a blender or food processor and see if your ferret likes them before investing in the grinder in my opinion.

Start out with small batches before buying in bulk to test for food allergies, then once your ferret is eating the different proteins proposed with no issues (hopefully), you can combine them all.