Raw Frankenprey menu + A raw mix question

[aitohikari]

Hello, I'm looking into hopefully starting my ferret journey this year and wanted to ask some diet questions about feeding them raw foods.

With the basic Frankenprey Menu:




When it says "Bone in" for AM Monday to Sunday,

Does that mean on Monday AM, for example, they are only eating from the following list:

Bone Sources:
- Chicken: any/all
- Quail: any/all
- Rabbit: any/all
- Turkey: necks, ribs, and wing tips
- Duck: neck, ribs, spine, and wing tips
- Frog: any/all
- Any small, adult bird: pheasant, partridge, ptarmigan, etc. any/all
- Cornish game hen
- Any commercial frozen raw with 10-15% ground bone.
- Any freeze-dried raw with 10-15% ground bone.

And not any liver, kidney, heart, or other? Just a piece of meat with a bone attached?

And then on Monday and Tuesday PM, they are only having muscle meat, i.e., boneless meat that has not been processed?

If so, this menu is about spreading the diet throughout the week with select meat parts for different PM meals, correct?

What I was thinking of going out and buying each element and creating a mixture of food from them to eat each AM/PM meal, for example, based on the following:

80% muscle meat, 10% bone, 10% organ

From this, I will make a 10kg mix (352.74oz):

- 1kg of bone (such as minced chicken carcass, chicken necks, chicken wing tips).
- 500g of liver (either chicken/lamb/beef).
- 500g of kidney (either chicken/lamb/beef).
- 2kg of heart (either chicken/lamb/beef).
- 6kg of mixed muscle meat (such as chicken, lamb, beef, kangaroo, horse, goat, rabbit, duck, or turkey).

This will then get chopped up into chunks mixed (for example still in chunks with bone and not blended together in a soup) together by weight. So each meal, they will get bones, liver, kidney, heart, and muscle meat. Would this be a good idea? Or just stick with the above option?

[Corvidophile]

You can do that, there’s no reason not to once you try each meat source on its own once and make sure there are no allergies. If you buy a ton of meat and mix it all together with chicken livers and then discover that your ferret can’t have chicken due to digestive issues, that’s a lot of time, energy and money down the drain. You’ll even have the bonus of more consistent stool because they’ll be having organ alongside bone. (When you feed organs by themselves, they often get diarrhea).

One problem with feeding chunks of everything but not blending it into soup: sometimes they’re picky eaters and you’ll find if you don’t force them to, for example, eat only hearts in a meal or be hungry, they’ll just pick around the heart pieces and eat everything else because everything else is still enough food to satisfy them.

Speaking of hearts: choose the smallest animals for hearts as they have the most taurine in them from beating faster. If you have to buy beef heart instead of chicken heart, for example, you’re going to want to cut out some other muscle meat and feed a larger percentage beef heart. By what amount? I’m actually not sure! You can also buy powdered taurine supplement and sprinkle in a measured amount to make up the difference.

[aitohikari]

Thanks for the info, do people general mix up their food into a soup regardless of giving them one at a time or mixing together multi types of meat?

So with the Frankenprey when it says "Bone in" for AM Monday to Sunday, are they also just selecting a singe type of bone in pre day to test what they are digestive issues/allergies to? And are they blending it into a soup?

[Corvidophile]

Most people choose not to blend it into soup or grinds, but some do. If you can get the ferret to eat chunks, especially bone-in chunks, it’s much better for keeping their teeth clean.

When first trying it out, yeah, select a single protein source per meal and check out the resulting stool. Once your ferret is used to and accepts a particular meat you can then mix them with confidence. A lot of people still choose to keep the different animals separate though and switch them on a meal to meal basis. Monday rabbit leg in the morning and half beef liver/half lamb lung at night, Tuesday chicken wings in the morning and pork cutlet at night, Wednesday frogs legs in the morning and chicken hearts at night, etc. The day of the week doesn’t matter as long as they’re spaced out well and all the meals occur within about a week.