From:
AFERRETVET@cs.com
Date: 2001-05-03 05:47:00 UTC
Subject: Re: [Ferret-Health-list] Re: Food for Sick Ferret
Hi Katharine,
Actually A/D is a high protein and a high fat food.
The reason it says only 8.5% crude protein is because
it is 78% water. You have to convert to a dry matter basis
to compare it to other ferret foods.
A/D is fine to feed to ferrets short term and even long term
to help insulinoma ferrets. However for a ferret with chronic
kidney failure, you do want a "low protein" diet to help prevent
nausea and anorexia.
Eukanuba has a multistage kidney diet for cats. I would suggest
feeding that along with your regular ferret food. Unfortunately we
do not
have a ferret "Kidney Diet," nor do we know exactly what protein
level would be low enough to help. The other problem is if the
protein
level is too low then we create other problems.
Hope that helps,
Jerry Murray, DVM