Message Number: YG12498 | New FHL Archives Search
From: Flemming Farms
Date: 2002-04-15 02:22:00 UTC
Subject: Re: Baby ferret nursing formula????

A quick note. I never supplement kits with a milk
mixture unless they obviously need it. No milk
replacer can compare to a ferret's milk. That is what
they need - why fill them up on an inferior milk?

> From: fhbythesea@a...

> With smallish or younger kits, I mix KMR (kitten
> Milk replacer) in with the
> food...it has a lot of easily digestible nutrients
> that help boost the baby...

Actually - tho you'd think kitten - I think PetAg
suggests people use puppy mix for ferrets. I had some
kits that I tried hand rearing and I used a mix with
the kitten formula. All but two died (by three
weeks). When I had necropsies done we were amazed to
see that these kits all had full tummies - but no fat
around the organs. They had actually aspirated, but
the report from patho said it was like they were
getting cheap cat food to eat.

> From: "Chris Lloyd" <chris.lloyd2@b...>

> I would
> also be adding raw egg

During another hand rearing I had to do, I contacted
Dr. Judi Bell. She told me she had great success
rearing kits with a milk replacer and one egg yolk
(raw) added to every pint of milk (made with milk
replacer). I tried this and it worked wonderfully!
Problem is you are making up *heaps* of milk that you
don't use.

> From: Steve Austin <kazpat1@j...>

> I would also start giving some other foods, like
> different meats,
> and so on so the kit will accept a variety of foods.
> Foods that are good for the kit, like ferret kibble
> of different
> kinds, and meat, carcass if available, diffent meats
> like chicken,
> rabbit, etc.

Since 1999 I have started to introduce meats to kits
in mashes. They are about 3 1/2 weeks old or so when
I do this. Usually they are trying mom's meat at this
age. I make them up a milk replacer mix as described
above and use that to add to pureed chicken and other
meats (I swap them around each feeding). I also soak
kibbled food in the milk replacer and add that to my
mashes. This also works very well with Bob C's gravy
mix. I also feed this to my jills with kits at the
same time. I add calcium powder to the mix, too.
Crushed and dried egg shells work well, too (use a
coffee bean thingy).

Amy Flemming

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