From:
mjanke@miamiferret.org
Date: 2004-03-23 11:49:47 UTC
Subject: RE: Ferret Feeding
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <3970242.1080042587441.JavaMail.root@thallium.smartgroups.com>
Author wrote:
> We adopted Wheezy at age 5, and she is now over 8 years old. The people we adopted her from were feeding her a standard cat food (Kit 'N Kaboodle).....which is what we continued to feed her.
That's a terrible food, but at 8 years old and doing well, I think I'd be hesitant to change anything at this point in her life. When we got our first ferret back in the mid 80's and knew nothing, we fed Sid the worst (I know now) grocery store cat food. Sid lived longer than any ferret I've had since and he never had either adrenal disease or insulinoma. What does that mean? Who knows. Luck I guess because it couldn't have been the food.
"Duck Soup" used to be a specific concoction that was fed to a sick ferret. It was originally put together for a ferret named "Lucki Duck" hence the "Duck" soup name. It has since morphed into a generic term meaning any specially mixed diet for sick or recovering ferrets.
"Chicken Gravy" is something that was put together by Bob Church, also to help recovering ferrets. It's more nutritionally complete than most duck soup recipes. Many people report excellent results with this diet in challenged ferrets. You can find Bob's original recipe here...
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/duck_soup.htm
mike