From:
"Sukie Crandall"
Date: 2007-12-29 17:56:42 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: Totally Ferret Hypoallergenic food
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
A reminder: when folks like Dr. Lewington say "meat" they don't tend to mean just muscle
meat for a *long term* diet which is what people in the U.S. have spring to mind with what
is typically available in markets here. Muscle meat is low in many minerals. See past
posts on the topic, please, because diet is a topic that tends to get a bit hairy at times
even -- forgive the implied punning -- when whole prey is not the focus. Luckily, the
archives are easily used:
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
Products available vary among countries.
In addition to the many, many diet posts (some with links so you can get to both pro and
con info about any type of diet by using the FHL Archives) about the ups and downs of
pretty much any diet you can imagine that are available in the archives, these should help
folks in the U.S. learn about options and diet balancing with the products that are readily
available here, though remember in regard to at least some of these links, too, that there
are some who disagree with some points and some who agree with those same points:
http://www.petdiets.com/
http://www.trifl.org/gravy.shtml
I just figured that people might not know that there can be differences in locally available
products and typical vocabulary, so that what we in the U.S. can get in many suburban
markets and usually call "meat" (i.e. often not organs except sometimes for liver, often not
skin, often not bone, etc.) can cause mineral deficiencies over the long term, though those
in the U.S. who still have local full-service butcher shops can get things that those with
only supermarkets can not get.
We have had that vocabulary confusion happen in the opposite direction, too, a good
while back when some people either Australia or NZ expressed great surprise that meat-
only baby foods are available here. They said that all of the baby foods in their location
were casserole types with combined foods.
Eggs also are a very high quality protein source, a really fine food when part of a balanced
diet. In the U.S. eggs need to be cooked firm, partly due to the rate of salmonella and the
way the U.S. tackles that which removes the sealing layer from the shell (which is why
current U.S. market eggs have to be refrigerated). Among the possible food poisoning
causes, salmonella is one to which ferrets are pretty resistant but a ferret who gets it,
especially a compromised ferret, can have a terrible time with it and the poster was asking
for a compromised ferret. With egg whites you would want to cook, anyway, to avoid the
avidin binding to biotin in the egg whites and causing anemia as a result. To a lesser
encountered extent, very high levels of raw eggs, just like high levels of the wrong fishes,
can deplete the needed nutrient, thiamine, as per _Biology and Diseases of the Ferret, 2nd
ed._ page 168.
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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