From:
"mustelidmusk"
Date: 2009-05-11 06:58:10 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: Boys are boycotting Zupreem Premium food!
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
Hi,
I have quite a bit of experience switching ferrets to new foods.
Step 1:
Lightly crush up the old food a bit, and crush up some of the new food as well. Don't smash the food to death, you just want smaller pieces. This makes it more difficult for the ferret to distinguish between the new and old foods. When each piece of food has a larger "sniffing surface", the ferret can easily identify and pick out the old brand of food.
Step 2:
Put mostly the old brand of kibble (the crushed stuff) in a plastic ziplock bag. Add a small amount of the new crushed kibble. (Start with approximately 10 % new kibble and 90% old kibble. Seal the bag tightly and store for at least a day before feeding. This will mingle the smell of the two kibbles, so your ferrets will not be able to easily select and discard the new brand.
Step 3. Feed this same mix for about a 3-4 days. What the stools closely, and make sure they're both eating normal amounts. If all is well, increase the percentage of new kibble by another 10 percent.
If things are going well, you can try not crushing the kibbles to see how well they're accepting the new food after a week.
Eventually, your ferrets will be eating the new food.
I strongly recommend feeding more than one brand of kibble for the following reasons:
1. Not any single food is perfect. One brand may make up for something another bran is lacking.
2. I a food becomes unavailable, or if a recipe changes, your ferrets may resist changing. If you've just run out of your last bag of food and find out it's no longer available, you'll have no "old tuff" to mix with the new brand. This has been know to happen more than once!
My favorite approach to kibble feeding is to select 2 primary kibble brands and mix them 50-50%. This will be your basic food mix. Buy a small bag of a third brand. add a small amount of the third bag into the mix. When the third bag is used up, buy a small bag of a differnt brand to use as your "third bag". Rotate the brands you use for that third bag to offer variety and to keep you ferrets' palettes more flexible.
These are some of the tricks I've come up with over the years, and they seem to work pretty well!
Good luck switching!
-jennifer
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