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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2011 20:14:04 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2011 15:06:25 GMT -5
Any updates?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2011 19:51:35 GMT -5
They didn't seem to eat much yesterday or today ... pork chunks with soupie. I know they all eat the pork chunks, i have watched them.
food we can get from work: Cornish game hen, rabbit, deer, pork, chicken, beef, duck, alligator. Those are the meats but we can get almost anything else including different types of organs.
Not much else to report. Not sure why they aren't eating much the last two days, but i have been feeding em a little more than usual too. It seems like if i feed em less they seem hungry but if i feed em more they dont eat as much.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2011 21:02:03 GMT -5
Hmmm, well there's a few things that could be. If they are eating more at one meal time they won't eat as much the next, so that does make sense. Also ferrets can have a day or two where they just arent as hungry. As well, although I think it might be a little soon but then again maybe not, after they've been on raw for a while they eat less, the initial period during the switch they eat A TON to make up for lost nutrients but then they don't need as much. My ferrets honestly don't eat a lot in a meal, like 2 chicken large wings for one meal is enough for them or one and a half turkey necks cut up. Depends on the day and how hungry they are. So I wouldn't worry too much, keep a close eye on them all for other behaviour changes and keep me updated. So for the next meat I would recommend either beef or rabbit. Beef can be a strong taste as can rabbit but they are great proteins to have in the diet. Cornish hen and duck is great too but it's still poultry and we want variety. So you decide if you want to give some rabbit a try or some beef for next week. In the mean time, let me know how their appetites are!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2011 18:01:58 GMT -5
Its only been a month so i think things are going well at this point. I just need to get them on some other protein, prolly try some beef, i gave Cici a bit one day and she ate it right off my finger so, 1/3 of the way there.
Any specific part of the cow? I could try making some soup out of it, i got some eggshells left.
I will try and get some of those pork kidneys you mentioned too.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2011 18:48:20 GMT -5
Any kind of beef is fine. I usually get the cheaper cuts for my girls but I gave them some sirloin steak once and they LOVED it, go figure. That's great that Cici took right to it! My two spoiled brats were picky about beef at first so I actually tried them on Veal (baby cow) first and then weaned them on to beef. But give some beef stewing meat or short ribs or even a cheaper steak a try. They can't really eat any of the bones, but mine like to chew on them. Let me know how that goes if we can get them eating chicken, pork and beef we'll have a nice solid foundation
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2011 19:03:04 GMT -5
Also if you wouldn't mind posting me a menu of what you're typically feeding in a week, along with who is eating what, that would be really helpful Sort of like this - but with amounts if possible (i.e. 2 ice cubes of soup and 6 pork chunks) MONDAY AM: MONDAY PM: I just want to get a general feel for how much and of what they are EACH eating right now. Thanks a ton!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2011 13:36:22 GMT -5
Beef sounds like a great next protein for them, we will prolly get some tomorrow. We are out of pork as of yesterday and almost out of chicken. So its time to go food shopping for the babies anyway.
Their menu is sorta the same pretty much everyday at the moment. The only thing that changes is when we decide to use pork instead of chicken.
AM - 3 ice cubes of soup about 4oz. + a cut up chicken wing which is about 2oz + ice cub of pumpkin. PM - 2 ice cubes of soup about 3oz. + a cut up chicken wing.
They all eat the soup and chunks, i even saw Baby Legs gnawing on one of the knuckle parts of the chicken wing bone this morning.
I cut the chicken (wing/drumlette) meat into decent size pieces, big enough to be chewed but not big enough to be a meal. Then i cut the bones up ( i usually leave meat on the bones while i cut them so its not just straight bone, the part of the chicken wing that has the two bones parallel i just cut right through both of them into about 1/4" pieces). The big bones i pretty much strip of meat and just toss it in the plate for the heck of it, they do chew on it now! I then pour the 4oz of soupie, kinda watery but its not super runny, right over the top of the chunks and then stir it up real good.
This one in the morning is made anywhere from 6:30-7:30am and is typically finished off but maybe some of the bigger knuckle pieces by 10:30am. Sometimes we will give them about 2 more ice cubes around 1pm. Then we repeat this around 8pm with 2 ice cubes of soup and a chicken wing (or pork chunks). This is when we normally have left overs, prolly cause they are getting something like 12-15oz of food in front of them everyday. I just like for them to have fresh food available for whenever they get hungry.
I can take some photos or maybe a video of the food, how its prepared and exactly how much. I hope i'm not messing anything up, they all seem to be fine with what they are eating now so if all we need to do is get em off soup and varied proteins, eat some livers, hearts, kidneys then we shouldn't be too far off.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2011 19:21:52 GMT -5
That sounds really good to me so far The only thing I would change would be this: 1) I'm a little worried Dids and Cici might be getting a bit too much bone (calcium) so I'm going to have you decrease the amount of ground-up bone/egg shell you use in the raw soup. So from now on only use between 1/8-1/4 tsp ground up bone OR egg shell (no need to use both) per 8oz of meat in the soup instead of 1/2 tsp. Once Baby Legs is eating bone on his own (rather than just knawing on it) I will get you to remove the bone/egg shell from the soup completely. 2) I'm going to have you start to form a bit of a more balance weekly meal to start trying to get the bone/meat ratios more exact. And then we'll work the heart/organ rations into that as well. So right now you are feeding pork which is muscle meat (since they can't really eat the bones) and chicken (which is BONE-IN meat since they can eat the bones) and then you will be feeding beef (which is muscle meat, non-edible bones). The basic guidelines for a weekly meal plan are: 8-9 bone in meals a week 3-4 muscle meals(at least one of which NEEDS to be heart 1 meal of organs(2oz liver, 2oz other organ) So ignoring the organ part for now (since they are getting liver in their soup and you still have to work on them eating organs) I want you to try balance their meals in the following weeks like this: 8 meals BONE-IN (since they are getting the bone in the soup still, I'm gonna go with 8 instead of 9) --> feed the chicken wings here + I'd really like you to try find some other edible bones - be it cornish hen, chicken necks, rib cages, smaller pork bones, etc. IDEALLY the bone-in meals should not be all chicken, so you're going to have to do some searching for other bones at the store 5 meals MUSCLE MEAT (feed the pork chunks and the beef chunks here & then we'll add in a few other protein sources eventually) 1 meal per week HEARTS - I want you to ONLY offer heart with soup on it for this meal. They should get hungry enough to try the heart but you can rub the meat on their noses a little bit and hand them chunks. If they hide the heart - this is a good sign, they will probably eat it. As for the organs, they are getting the liver in the soup still which is pretty much balancing that, so try offer them some pork kidney and some liver (chicken liver or pork liver is the best to start) every other day or so to try get them a taste for it. Put some pumpkin on it, a couple drops of oil and then rub the meat against their lips and see if they will try it. Organ meat is pretty strong tasting so you're going to have to just keep offering it like this until they try it - it could take a couple weeks, so be patient I know that's a lot of info to digest - but keep in mind you are pretty much already doing all of it - I'm just having you shift your feeding schedule around slightly to start to balance it more Let me know if you have any questions EDIT: also wanted to add - you can feed more than 1 ice cube of pumpkin per ferret per day. the pumpkin gets pretty watered down when you freeze it so I would increase it to 1 ice cube per ferret per meal (so two ice cubes of pumpkin per day). This way they are getting enough pumpkin to prevent any nasty hairballs from occurring again!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2011 7:48:37 GMT -5
Two quick things: Once i started getting the chicken leg quarters ground up i stopped adding eggshell that day. I did see Baby Legs CHEWING!!! YAY on a bone for almost 20 minutes yesterday. - Also, i only been feeding them one ice cube per day, for all three of them. I dont water the pumpkin down when i freeze it. each cube is more than 3 teaspoons, which i thought 1 teaspoon per was enough. If this is not enough and i SHOULD be watering it down when i freeze it please let me know. I need to make more prolly tomorrow : D.
Monday- am – chicken pm – pork Tuesday- am – chicken pm – chicken Wednesday - am – beef pm – chicken Thursday- am – hearts pm – chicken Friday- am – liver/kidneys pm – beef Saturday- am – chicken pm – pork Sunday- am – chicken pm - chicken
This is a rough schedule we just made. Look ok? I'm going to look for some other bones besides chicken like you mentioned but for now this is what i got to work with.
I'm going to go ahead and make what is left of the ground chicken leg quarters for soup until its gone, then chicken and liver only, ok?. Would it be ok if i went back to ground chicken breast or should it be dark meat?
We are really excited about this stage in their development so if none of this sounds good then let me know : D
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2011 14:17:10 GMT -5
One ice cube is just fine if there's that much pumpkin in it, I was just picturing it as being much less pumpkin That menu looks good so far As long as each of those chicken meals is bone-in and the rest of those meals have no bone - then it's exactly right I would also recommend feeding a couple hearts as an "add-on" to a one or two other meals per the week. That way if they dont eat enough hearts during the "hearts only" meal, you can be sure they are getting enough taurine - and you can't over-do taurine So now the only thing to do is to start implementing it, get them eating the hearts and liver/kidneys during those meals and to replace some of the chicken bone-in meals with other-protein bone-in meals eventually. As for the meat in the soup - it doesn't matter if it's ground chicken breast or dark meat, any part of the chicken is fine That's awesome news about baby legs! I am also very happy that you have progressed so far! Keep up the good work and keep me updated on their progress Once they are all eating bone, meat, organs and heart on their own and you can get them eating at least one more "protein type", they'll be well on their way to graduating! Let me know how they like the beef and organ
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2011 15:58:09 GMT -5
first thing: I just put some nice big chunks of steak in there just for fun, Cici and Dids went right to it and started goin at it!!! Baby Legs is sleeping so maybe he will when he wakes up.
Also, my girlfriend got lamb kidneys/livers... Is that ok? They look giant. 2oz liver/ 2oz kidneys ... for one meal a week, CHECK!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2011 20:02:04 GMT -5
FANTASTIC! Just keep an eye on their poops, beef can make them a little off which is totally normal but some ferrets seem to have issues with beef as a protein so if you get really nasty poops or anything out of the ordinary let me know. Beef is a great protein to have in the diet and you can also get beef hearts and organs if your guys are a fan of beef Lamb organs are just fine they might taste a little stronger than the chicken ones so you may have to coax them a bit more to get them to try them but lamb is a GREAT protein - super gentle on the tummies, definitely give it a go (cut the organs into smaller pieces) and let me know how they take to it
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Post by Deleted on Sept 30, 2011 12:27:35 GMT -5
One of the babies had a very very very dark poop, almost black. I dont think Baby Legs ate any of the beef so i'm pretty sure it was cici or dids. Should i be careful with the beef because of this? I'm assuming this is what you meant by off poops.
I'm going to make some soup with the lamb livers but i'm not sure how much they are supposed to get. is it 2oz/ferret per week? So if they eat a whole thing of soupie in lets say 3 days, i should only give 6oz for three ferrets per week then divide it by 2 because 3 days is just under 1/2 a week. so 3 oz of liver in each batch of soup, 8 oz chicken meat, 2 hearts.
Other than the really dark poop and the question about this lamb liver, everything seems to be going ok. Tomorrow is a pork day but i ran out of pork this morning so i'm going to sub beef instead. As long as you think its ok!!!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 30, 2011 15:09:28 GMT -5
The really dark poops are actually considered normal for darker more blood rich meats. They are a bit shinier and almost black because of the blood from the meats. You will see this color with beef, any hearts and any liver and it's totally normal. As long as the poop goes back to it's normal colour on the lighter meats (chicken and pork), there is nothing to worry about. By "off poops" I was referring to the really nasty watery smelly diarrhea that some ferrets with more sensitive tummies or IBD can get from beef. As long as the consistency of the stool is more or less normal - then don't worry about the color. I'll try be more specific in the future I would say your math is correct on the soup. Though you may want to start with a little less liver at first just while they are getting used to it. I just don't want their poops to get too runny from it since they will be having it every day. They shouldn't get too bad as long as they're getting enough bone (which they are) but it may take their bodies a while to get used to the richness. So for the first batch just use a couple of smaller pieces of liver, see how they do and then with future batches work up to the amount you stated above. You really don't have to worry about them not getting enough liver right now, ferrets can live off just baby food for months when they are sick and not get nutritionally deprived so that's why with the switching process we can do things slowly and not worry about them getting deprived of any one nutrient And you can definitely substitute meats and move the menu around all you want (I just use my menu as a rough guideline) as long as you keep the bone-meat-organ-heart ratios the same it's always good to mix up the proteins though, I find my ferrets start to get mad if they are getting too much chicken or pork etc. They like variety for sure
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