From:
nzweezul
Date: 2002-05-07 04:31:00 UTC
Subject: Re: food
found outside that will
> only eat a store brand cat food. > This ferret is stubborn, she
refuses to eat anything else.
I had a similar problem with two elderly ferrets who had been fed
carcase meat and just a little brand-name supermarket cat (not even
Kitten) biscuits. I am happy for them to continue eating carcase meat
BUT they must eat a better-quality kibble for the times I cannot get
suitable meat, need to have friends care for them, and just for sheer
convenience. The brand-name cat biscuits they were eating caused
their faeces to be bright orrange, smelly, soft and frothy yet they
were the very DEVIL to persuade to eat anything else. What I did was
take a few of the next brand "up" of cat biscuits and BURY them in
the ones they were addicted to for a week. Then I dug them out, and
fed them. I made sure they were hungry, and for the previous two days
apart from their raw meat, had had only high-quality kitten biscuits
available, which they had ignored. They wolfed down the biscuits
which were just flavoured and scented with the orange addictive ones.
So already they were eating something a bit better than before. I
continued with this ploy, I got sick and tired of digging out
biscuits from other biscuits with my fingers day after day but I tell
you something - IT WORKED! It meant buying fresh packs of the "crap"
biscuits to transfer their flavour and scent to the good, better and -
finally - best foods, but finally they were weaned from their
addiction and the biscuits naturally became less and less influenced
by the scent and flavour of the others as I didn't buy anymore to
transfer their addictive flavour across. Now they eat a mixture of
various premium kitten chows, ferret biscuits when I can get it, and
of course their much-loved carcass meat. They are going on eight or
nine years old and in perfect health.