From:
"Sukie Crandall"
Date: 2007-05-21 06:35:05 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: Food Question
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
Newborns and the very young animals have
very different mineral proportions than older
rodents or chickens so if pinkies and chicks
are the main components of the diet without
proper supplementation that can result in
rickets and other serious deficiencies. The
bad effects can be magnified if the ferrets
getting that diet are young ones who are still
developing themselves.
The following assortment of comments look
to be the case from some quick scanning of
resources given, but take into account that I
have limited visual acuity for reading pdfs on-
line. Many do not increase in size well since
they tend to get fuzzy, so do read the various
charts and related sections of the articles
yourself to check me because my eyes can
mess me up at times.
Fat levels are also lower in certain baby animals,
and protein levels also can be in some, but in
others can be higher.
Even levels of vitamins in the very young animals
can be different, for instance, lower levels of
A in the livers in some species studied. Meanwhile
neonatal mice have only about a third of the E of
juvenile mice.
If a person just thinks about it it becomes obvious
why this is so, especially for calcium since the very
young have cartilage with ossification centers in
many places where older animals have full bone.=20
A neonatal mouse has about half the calcium of an
adult mouse.
I decided to try to find some resources. This looks
like it would have potential but I could not find it:
Whole body concentrations of major minerals and
of some trace elements in 3, 5 and 6 weeks old
broiler chicks
E. Niess ; M. Hovenj=FCrgen ; E. Pfeffer ; Department
for Animal Nutrition, University of Bonn, Germany
It appears that mother mice have the mineral
composition of the milk change over time which
could indicate that the needs of some minerals
change with mouse pup development and that
therefore the levels of such minerals in the pups
at different stages of development would differ:
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/reprint/121/5/687
features such as Table 4 look to be of special
interest, though my vision limits my ability to be
sure of that.
http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/zoo/WholePreyFinal02May29.pdf
is "Nutrient Composition of Whole Vertebrate
Prey (Excluding Fish) Fed at Zoos"
Sukie (not a vet)
Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
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