Sukie Crandall wrote:
>A general reminder to folks here on the FML: natural diet doesn't mean
>just meat or just meat and fat. Wild relatives eat some skin, meat, fat,
>some bone, some cartilage, organs, some marrow, etc. (Likely also get
>some fetal critters, some fetal birds, some yolks, some amphibians, some
>fish, some insects, etc.) All parts have useful contributions to a diet,
>not just meat.
If you grind a whole chicken up, you get bones, cartilage, marrow, fat...
I add eggs as well, whole, I don't bother about throwing the egg white
anymore. I usually add one egg per day which means every ferrets gets
about half an egg a week. You can feed organs if you can get them and your
ferrets accept them, I could get chicken livers and beef heart and lamb's
kidneys but my guys don't all like organs so I don't want to grind organs
into their meat. But you can substitute liver with cod liver oil, heart
with taurine tablets etc. so the ferrets still get the nutrition. I still
think raw whole chicken is a whole load better than kibble, you won't find
foetal critters or amphibians or insects in kibble and you can feed fish.
But there's probably going to be a lot of stuff in kibble that you wouldn't
want to feed! We had this thing here in Britain where they managed to sell
chicken that was not fit for human consumption to shops! So I bet it's
quite possible that there is nasty stuff in kibble. And even if they use
chicken fit for human consumption, they won't be using whole nice chickens.
And after all they do to the chicken to make it into a kibble, there won't
be much goodness in it. And wild relatives wouldn't eat 40% grains, not
even their prey eats grains. Grains are not a useful contribution to the
ferret's diet, either.
Best wishes from
Ulrike
and Jilly, Jack, Bella, Tom, Mason, Baby, Dana, Fox, Reno, Rose, Jasmine,
Barney and Spike
Missing Angel, Hope and Igor
West Wales Ferret Welfare
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.ferretlove.freeserve.co.uk
Last update 20/12/00
[Posted in FML issue 3319]
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