Next Meat? and Fighting?

[bailey]

All right so my babies are eating, and loving, chicken wings. I'm so proud of them
But I figured they're used to it now, so I gotta adapt them to another form of meat since I know they need at least three different kinds in their diet.
So what would be the best one to start them on next? Should I expect them to be just as difficult as they were with the chicken? It's NEW, so they could be resistent to try it at all. But it's till raw meat, so I'm not sure if they'd be more willing now.

Also, I'm not sure if this is a problem or not. But I could only give them one chunk of meat [bone in chicken wing] since they wouldn't eat two by the time I had to throw it out. So of course this caused a little bit of fighting. Should I be worried about this?
They both end up munching on it, and it didn't seem to get too serious...but I just wanted to make sure I'm not setting myself up for disaster later.

[goingpostal]

Are they eating different parts of chicken or just wings? It's really up to you on what you want to try next, you can do something similar like turkey, or try beef or pork, mine were pretty open to trying anything once they understand meat was food, and they fight over stuff all the time, doesn't matter how much their is, I could give 6 mice to 4 ferrets and they still try to hoard and take all of them. They work it out.

[Sherry]

The fighting is normal, especially when it's something they really enjoy ;D I've seen 4 on one item of whole prey, all tugging, hissing and screaming at each other ;D
As for your next protein, I'd go with turkey or pork, since they are both milder than beef. You also need to look at trying some heart and some liver pretty soon. Any kind will do, but no more than 2oz liver per ferret per week.

[Deleted]

Probably most meats would be fine. I had no trouble getting Mika to go from chicken to all other meats I've tried (in soup stage still) and actually seems to enjoy the redder meats more I think.

Sherry, question for you (or anyone else with an answer) because the 2oz of liver has me a bit worried. I recently started buying organic pet food instead of just pure human grade meat (though I did still buy a bunch of this, its just way too expensive to do it pure). They tell me there is a lot of meat, but it also has kidney and liver mixed into it as well, with heart occasionally but not usually (It also has bone ground to dust into it). Its made for cats and dogs so do you think the portions are reletively safe or should I try and get exact ratios from the supplier to make sure? It looks fairly meaty and not super red like a lot of the liver and kidney would make it.

[Heather]

You can always request the breakdown from the manufacturer. The bone dust is it raw or cooked?
ciao

[bailey]

Thanks for the answers.
I wasn't too worried about the fighting, but wanted to make sure it wasn't anything I SHOULD be concerned about.

I had a package of just chicken wings, and they seemed the perfect size for a meal already, so I haven't tried them on other parts though. I'm sure they'll enjoy it all now that they know it's tasty NOT poison.

I also didn't know if a certain kind of meat would be easier to switch them to or not. I'll have to explore the meat section here soon And we still have a package of hearts & gizzards in the freezer, I'll stick those in the fridge to thaw and try em out again. I know they wouldn't take a whole heart earlier, but that was before they would eat the whole chicken wing too.

[Deleted]

Should be raw bone.

[Deleted]

I love the little tiffs they get into over a certain piece of meat. Shows how enthusiastic they are about it. Certainly never saw them do that with kibble. They run faster and hiss louder than I thought possible. Very entertaining to watch them at mealtime.