Hello

[ew2rusch]

My name is Ben and I found this place because I'm having a bit of a crisis. I have 2 ferrets, both masked, 1 is a little female named Arya (I'm a Game of Thrones fan) and the bigger male is Bandito (roommate got to name him and he's not very creative).

I've had them for about 2 months now and they are some real fun. Arya steals socks and Bandit steals shoes, so they are a good pair. I only have 1 hammock for them in their cage right now and Arya pretty much claimed it as hers, though Bandit will intertwine himself with her to fit in it at the same time sometimes.


Anyway, my crisis. Payday is tomorrow afternoon and the ferrets chowed through their food faster than I thought they would and now it's gone. I have no money to get more food for them tonight and I have been skimming through here and Google looking for a homemade food to get them by for the next day.

I know I have stuff they can eat, but I have no idea how to combine it so they will eat it. I'm working with a pound of ground beef, 6 eggs,some chicken breast, hot dogs, hamburgers, and some chicken broth.

Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

[Heather]

Hi and welcome on board.
Hmmm, you do have a dilemma. How old are your wee ones? Ferrets fixate on their kibbles after about 9 months, meaning that they often won't eat other things willingly. You can give it a try, it certainly can't hurt some are better than others but I would be budgeting for your wee ones, starting with your next paycheck. What if it was an emergency vet appt that you were looking at right now.
Ok to try and get you out of your jam
Do you have a blender?
Take a couple of chicken breasts, 1 whole egg, (dry the egg shell, don't put it in the oven, you want it raw) and grind them to a fine powder. You will need 1/2 tps per lbs of chicken. You can grind the shell with a mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder. You can either put the chicken breasts in a blender (don't put the bones in there ) or slice them up no bigger than your finger nail tip. Mix this into a soupy. I would suggest you using the chicken broth the make it more liquid but it can't be a prefab, it has to be real broth. No salt, no sodium...so no smoked meats...you eat the hotdogs
Your wee ones won't recognise (probably) this as food so you will probably have to hand feed them. Dabbing a bit on their noses to get them to taste it will help, if you can get them to taste this and eventually eat from a spoon for you that will get some nutrition into them. If you read around the forum you will see it will probably not be an easy job. Please feel free to ask any questions that you may have, everyone is friendly. Good luck
ciao

[Deleted]

Ditch the hotdogs and hamburgers, and the broth if it has sodium or seasonings added

[Sherry]

Hi, and welcome- and good luck! Let us know how they do with it. And just to let you know? They are going to be eating a ton right now, putting on their winter weight. They'll gain up to 40% of their body weight, so the appetite increases accordingly.
As it is, you are going to want to get at least 2-3oz a day into the female, and 4-6 oz a day into the male. Preferably more.
Who knows? They might like it enough that you can switch them to totally raw fed

[ew2rusch]

Thanks for the advise all. It's good to know they will be eating more, I am still learning ferrets since I've only owned cats before.

They are both about 2 years old. I figured the processed human food was a no go, but figured I may as well mention it. The broth was safe to use because I pay more for safe foods for me too, I forgot to mention I'm gluten intolerant and cross contamination is a real issue for me.

I did the chicken breast/egg/broth combo and Bandit happily ate it up. Arya needed a little convincing, but she seemed content with it. I am definitely considering switching to raw now, I currently buy them food from a natural pet food supplier since the stuff in chain supermarkets has almost as much corn as it does meat.

I mentioned whole prey to my roommate and he was completely against it.

[Heather]

You can create a totally natural balanced diet using frankenprey, so assure your roomy that prey doesn't have to be on the menu ;D there are a lot of people on here who just cannot bring themselves to feed prey as they have pets that are their ferrets prey animals. Now that you're not on the spot and both of your wee ones are eating their substitute diet, prowl through the nutritional section....read through the sections on meat diets. Check out the mentoring program see if that would fit into your ideas and timing. Even if you decide not to mentor, check out the diets and read through the threads. Discover the tricks and menus that are needed to create a healthy balanced diet. We've had a huge number of successes and your wee ones are already on the way. If not you can get all your information just by asking questions.
I hope that I will be seeing more of you around and some pictures would be greatly appreciated...putting furry faces to names

ciao

[Deleted]

Hi Ben! glad you joined us. It sounds like you are well on your way to switching them to raw already - check out how long it took some of us to get our brats eating anything other than kibble A lot of us don't feed whole prey but there are lots of variations on "raw diets". Just keep checking out the different threads and experimenting with what they like/will tolerate and you'll soon find what works best for you (but don't get too comfortable - our fuzzies love to keep us on our toes at all times!!)

[Sherry]

You've definitely got two "naturals"! Took me six weeks just to convince one of mine that the raw soup you are feeding wasn't poison ;D

[Deleted]

Welcome to the forum & what everybody else said: all natural meat!

[Deleted]

Welcome to the forum! If you decide to switch it sounds like you wont have much of a problem at all.