From:
leese10ferts
Date: 2002-01-04 23:34:00 UTC
Subject: Re: Putting on weight?
--- In Ferret-Health-list@y..., bwiborg@w... wrote:
> My ferret, Lucy, has been sick recently (3 vets have been unable to
> determine the cause as of yet) and stopped eating, so I have been
> feeding her duck soup to get her weight up again. So far she has not
> gained much back in the past two weeks. The duck soup I make for
her consists of moistened IAMS Kitten, Gerbers turkey & rice, Gerbers
> chicken & gravy, ferretvite, Ensure, ferretone (for taste), and a
can of chicken pieces, all blended together. Is there something else
I can add to that or give seperately to help increase her weight?
For the ferrets that I've had that weren't eating and needed to boost
weight, I found that keeping it simple worked better than anything
else. I only use Heinz 2nd stage chicken with chicken gravy (similar
to Gerber) and Hills a/d. If the ferret is very skinny, I add a
little STAT to it, but that's it. For very sick ferrets and for the
one I had who had chronic stomach problems, I would only feed chicken
baby food. Anything else can just irritate their bellies.
Keeping it simple seems to help promote their upset tummies to heal
better and get them back on track. They can't pull much nutrients
from the Ensure and if you're using the chicken and gravy babyfood
(or turkey and gravy), there really isn't a need to use the turkey
and rice - ferrets can't digest rice products anyway. I'm not sure
what the canned chicken pieces are, but typically canned food has an
excess of salt added to preserve it and may not be very good for them
either.
An average ferret stomach can hold about 35cc's of soup comfortably.
If you feed this amount every 4-6 hours, your ferret should gain
weight fairly quickly and well - provided there's no problems in
digesting the food.
My suggestion is to try feeding a simple soup more often and see how
she does. You can worry about trying to switch her back onto her
kibble solely once you have her stable.
Lisa Shortley