Impimation and supplements

[Sander]

Hello ferret lovers!

First, a short question. Until what age can a ferret be imprint on a new food? Is 6 months too old to be imprint on raw diet?

The second question is more complex. I want to alternate between two grinds supplemented with two raw eggs a week, mouse and chicken hearts, but I have doubts about the weekly or daily quantities of these last two.

One of the grinds is 80/10/10 and meets the minimum for taurine but so closely that I fear that the proportion of taurine will go down with the other supplements or treats, so I want to supplement it with chicken hearts to make sure my ferret has plenty of taurine but without breaking the balance of the 80/10/10 proportions, so how many hearts at most should I feed?

The other one is 75/15/10 and doesn't meet the minimum for taurine (0'04g per 100g). How many hearts in this case?

And for both cases, how many mouses maximum can I feed per week or day?

Thank you!

[Corvidophile]

Ferrets imprint stronger as they get older, but even many years old ferrets can be taught raw is food, it just takes longer. Six months shouldn’t be too bad.

For the first diet, one meal of chicken heart (about a palmful of them, 4-7 depending on their size, or about three oz in weight if you have a scale- or what your ferret will eat within 12 hours if they’re a smaller or bigger ferret) and one chicken wing added a week will bring up both the bone and muscle meat content in proportion.

For the second diet, you don’t need to raise the bone, so two meals of heart a week (ideally spaced evenly apart) will do it.

Whole prey, especially small prey like adult mice and adult quail, contains all they need. Mice are especially high in taurine. You can replace any meal with two five week old mice (the age most frozen adult mice are) or one really big older mouse, like a retired breeder, sometimes you can find those sold as XL’s. If your ferret is big toss in a small chunk of other meat to supplement the single older mouse, a heart will do. My own ferret eats half mice for all his food, and the other half is frankenprey and the occasional baby chicken chick. The chicks, whether you feed chicken or a few quail, are not nutritionally complete as they’re just born. It takes growth for them to become considered a balanced meal as they develop and start containing more vitamins and minerals.

[Sander]

Thank you very much, this is really helpful. But I think I have to clarify that the 75/15/10 diet is muscle/organs/bone, so it would be necessary to increase the amount of bone as well?

I'm also a little confused with the amoumt of hearts that you indicated for the first diet, which is the one that meets the minimum necessary taurine, that amount of Hearts every day? Because it would be more than for the diet that doesn't meet the minimum of taurine 🤔

[Corvidophile]

Oh, I assumed the bone was the 15% and the organs were the 10%, yeah if it’s the other way around add in two heart meals and one chicken wing meal a week.

The first amount stated for the 80/10/10, the handful of hearts to the diet that probably already has enough taurine but you’re just making sure- replace one meal a week with 4-7 hearts.

[Sander]

Thank you so much, that makes sense haha 😅

About the mice, which would be more economical/profitable, buy them frozen from the stores or raise my own feeders?

[Corvidophile]

It depends! If feeding many ferrets an occasional mouse or a single ferret a lot of mice, raising your own colony is more cost effective. You need enclosures (I used big clear plastic tubs with the centers of lids cut out and 1/4 inch hardware cloth glued on), food (I used Envigo Teklad formula 2018, a lab block, and bought it in five pound sacks, usually 30 pounds at a time to reduce shipping cost) water bottles, wheels, upside down plastic food containers with entrances cut out of them as hides, bedding (I used wooden stove pellets as my base layer and scattered clumps of Box-O-Comfort or CareFresh throughout for them to use as nesting stuff), a rotation of cardboard items for chewing (toilet paper and paper towel rolls, egg cartons, food boxes) and either CO2 canisters and a whipped cream charger and ziplock bags to euthanize them or a strong enough resolve to cervically dislocate them. I enjoyed it, and cared deeply for my mothers even if they themselves were retired from breeding and fed to my ferrets in the end. I bred lots of interesting colours and coat patterns and they were trained to hop into my hand when presented and friendly. They were like keeping livestock for food. Eventually I had to stop because I’m allergic to mice, and my asthma kept getting worked up whenever I cleaned cages.

Bought frozen, I think they range from 60 cents to $2 a large mouse depending on where you buy from. If you’re not using that many mice, frozen is the way to go, because otherwise you’ll find yourself with 30 mice all pregnant and having litters of an average of 15 pups each really fast, and using up lots of food and bedding. Males will kill each other when they reach sexual maturity, so you’ll have mostly ladies per enclosure with one head honcho impregnating them.

[Sander]

Jun 4, 2024 16:49:49 GMT -5 Corvidophile said:

Oh, I assumed the bone was the 15% and the organs were the 10%, yeah if it’s the other way around add in two heart meals and one chicken wing meal a week.

The first amount stated for the 80/10/10, the handful of hearts to the diet that probably already has enough taurine but you’re just making sure- replace one meal a week with 4-7 hearts.

I have a question, what counts as one chicken wing? From the shoulder to the tip of the wing or from the elbow to the tip?

[Corvidophile]

Shoulder to tip- Humerus, radius and ulna, down to metacarpals and phalanges. Ferrets can eat around the humerus, but don’t expect them to eat the bone itself up there, too hard. The rest of the bones should be eaten.

[Sander]

Jun 4, 2024 6:30:07 GMT -5 Corvidophile said:

Ferrets imprint stronger as they get older, but even many years old ferrets can be taught raw is food, it just takes longer. Six months shouldn’t be too bad.

For the first diet, one meal of chicken heart (about a palmful of them, 4-7 depending on their size, or about three oz in weight if you have a scale- or what your ferret will eat within 12 hours if they’re a smaller or bigger ferret) and one chicken wing added a week will bring up both the bone and muscle meat content in proportion.

For the second diet, you don’t need to raise the bone, so two meals of heart a week (ideally spaced evenly apart) will do it.

Whole prey, especially small prey like adult mice and adult quail, contains all they need. Mice are especially high in taurine. You can replace any meal with two five week old mice (the age most frozen adult mice are) or one really big older mouse, like a retired breeder, sometimes you can find those sold as XL’s. If your ferret is big toss in a small chunk of other meat to supplement the single older mouse, a heart will do. My own ferret eats half mice for all his food, and the other half is frankenprey and the occasional baby chicken chick. The chicks, whether you feed chicken or a few quail, are not nutritionally complete as they’re just born. It takes growth for them to become considered a balanced meal as they develop and start containing more vitamins and minerals.

Another question, one meal that the ferret eats withing 12 hours, that means the meal should last the 12 hours or in how many hours should the ferret eat it?

[Corvidophile]

It should satiate them for twelve hours, it doesn’t have to be available all twelve of the hours but some eat little bits really slowly so it will be. Some will scarf down like three ounces in a single sitting and unless they are a growing baby I wouldn't feed them again for about four hours just so they don’t get too fat over time. It takes about four hours for food to travel out of the ferret. Growing babies and pregnant or lactating mothers should always have food available as their calorie burn is much higher.

[Sander]

Okay thank you, and until what age is a baby growing?

[Corvidophile]

Mmm, probably six months old. They’re almost full size at four months, but they slow down and keep getting a little bigger and more filled out. I think entire males might grow for even longer.

[Sander]

To increase the amount of bone I can pressure cook chicken legs and then blend them or if they are cooked it's no the same?

[Corvidophile]

DO NOT cook bones, they’ll become hard and brittle. The small shards you’ll be able to create with home tools will be sharp and dangerous to swallow and pass through the intestines. The only way to use cooked bones is to pulverize them entirely into dust. If you have a way to do that, then you can. Much safer and easier to buy already powdered bone meal, I like the one put out by KAL. A little goes a long way, you’ll be using small pinches of it, so you don’t need to buy a very big bottle.

[Sander]

Aug 7, 2024 18:32:13 GMT -5 Corvidophile said:

DO NOT cook bones, they’ll become hard and brittle. The small shards you’ll be able to create with home tools will be sharp and dangerous to swallow and pass through the intestines. The only way to use cooked bones is to pulverize them entirely into dust. If you have a way to do that, then you can. Much safer and easier to buy already powdered bone meal, I like the one put out by KAL. A little goes a long way, you’ll be using small pinches of it, so you don’t need to buy a very big bottle.

So it would be easier to beat them if they are raw? I read that pressure cooking them made them softer. I saw a recipe in which a gelatin is made by blending the bones with the broth in which they are cooked.