From:
Melissa Litwicki
Date: 2001-11-07 19:54:00 UTC
Subject: Re: New ferret - need help and advice!
> From: "Robert Rose" <robert-rose@r...>
> feed her cod liver pate, a type of sardine, and raw eggs. And
> occasionally persimmon and grapes. Does anyone have suggestions about
> diet? I live in Moscow, Russia, and the people who bred her advise me
> to feed her raw meat (beef or lamb), fish, but not pork. And nothing
> fatty. Plus a few fruits now and then. Should meat be frozen, then
> thawed? I'm a little worried about worms, trichinosis, and so on, if
> the meat was fresh. What would you suggest about bathing a ferret? Are
There is plenty of information in the FHL archives about the fat and
protein requirements of ferrets as it applies to dry, kibbled cat food.
However, that is not as good a food as a raw diet formulation, or as a
whole prey diet. If you can feed your ferret fresh mice and occasional
day-old chicks, she will be happy (if she will eat them!). Some of the UK
owners can talk better about balanced raw diets. If I were to make up my
own raw diet for the ferret, however, it would involve:
- primarily raw meat
- smaller amounts of organ meat (liver); 1/4 to 1/5 the amt
of muscle meat, same source animal as the muscle meat
- calcium source (clean powdered eggshells, clean bone meal, or raw
bones)
- small amount of indigestible fiber
- small amount of fatty oils
- small amount of glandular tissues
- some raw egg for balance
There are raw diet formulations available on the web; one suitable for a
cat ought to be suitable for a ferret as long as it has no vegetables or
fruit in it.
Ferrets need no vegetables or fruits in their diets. They may enjoy them
as treats, but they can be unhealthy for them - the vegetables are
indigestible and the fruits contain too much sugar. Avoid making these
anything but the most rare of treats.
> From: "Mike Janke" <mjanke@m...>
>
> I don't know if freezing would kill any parasites or bacteria in the
> meat, though I think not. Cooking the meat thoroughly would be the
> best way to insure there is nothing harmful in it.
Cooking the meat destroys a significant portion of what enables ferrets to
live off the meat, and requires the addition of tons of supplements to
make up for that loss. Don't feed pork or rabbit meat that you're
uncertain about. Human-grade chicken, lamb, and beef should be fine as
long as it's fresh and clean. Ferrets can contract certain parasites
(giardia and coccidia) but are unlikely to get e. coli or salmonella.
Whatever meat you feed the ferret will have sufficient fat in it to meet
the ferret's needs.
Go back to the breeders and have them give you more details on what they
feed their ferrets, and do the same if it seems like a well-rounded diet.
If their ferret diet is impractical, you can mimic a "whole-prey" recipe
yourself with things you would buy in a normal grocery store.
I have been feeding my cat a raw diet now for months with no problems. The
ferret gets as much of this as she can steal while the cat's eating, but
for practicality's sake, it is not her primary food. The cat eats raw
chicken and raw chicken bones with no ill effects whatsoever - remember
that their digestive tracts are hugely different from ours, and optimized
to digest prey (well, most of it :) with a minimum of risk from parasites
and bacteria.
Melissa