I guess it behooves me to always preface my posts with these
statements:

1) Offering a natural diet or a kibble diet will always be the choice
of the human, not the ferret.

2) Feeding naturally encompasses a wide variety of animal sources and
forms, not just pieces of raw meat.

3) Your ferret is NOT on a Natural diet if it still has access to
kibble and cooked or processed foods.

4) It is possible to improve upon the health of a ferret when improving
the quality of the kibble, however OPTIMAL health is achieved when on a
natural diet.

Feeding ferrets Milk as their main staple, or Milk and honey while it
may have been done by the uninformed - very quickly caused the
observant ferret owner to change the ferret's diet or watch it die!
This poor choice of diet staple was written about many ages ago as can
be seen here:

http://faculty.njcu.edu/fmoran/vol4ferret.htm#note252

It may be common practice to offer the hunting ferrets milk in ADDITION
to the rabbit meat they ate as can be read from page 62 to 64 In Ferret
Husbandry, Medicine and Surgery by John H. Lewington. The author notes
the differences in texture, color and odor of the ferret deposits when
fed milk and also notes the more modern ability to offer ferrets
lactose free milk.

This UK site offers a concise outline for feeding ferrets and discusses
milk used in the diet:

http://www.britishferretclub.co.uk/feedingferrets.htm the reader can
see that milk is NOT a staple, but an additive or supplement.

Another overseas site with an overview of feeding ferrets and a
discussion of offering milk:

<http://www.waffs.org.au/showcontent.toy?senid=10302&contentnid=14600>

I offer my ferrets a drink of organic heavy cream on Sundays but dairy
is NOT a staple of my ferret's diet!

The splintery bone red-flag kibble feeders try to wave:

Raw bones are actually soft and bendy, ferrets will easily chew and
crunch these raw bones with no problems of splinters. It is the process
of heating that causes bones to harden especially baking or broiling.
Boiling bones until they crumble can offer a safe alternative to the
dry heated bones, but boiling also removes all the nutrients from the
bone! Ferret's teeth, jaws and tongue are perfectly designed to strip a
raw bone of the flesh and then crush and crack the soft raw bone into
sizes able to be swallowed. The digestive enzymes of the raw fed ferret
are perfectly adapted to dissolve the eaten bones. Feeding whole prey
with fur on also offers the ferret's digestive tract protection from
any possible puncture or irritation. I've done a personal "study" of
this very efficient process:

http://media.putfile.com/Mouse-Scat-Dissection-070408

Maybe a review of some posts to the FML by the esteemed Bob Church will
offer more insight than I can. I know that ferrets certainly choke on
kibble and swallow many items that are NOT bones yet are indigestible
and life threatening, and the majority of these ferrets would be found
to be kibble fed, because the majority of ferrets ARE in fact kibble
fed. Its just easier to envision a ferret choking on a bone than it is
those cutesy stars and circles of kibble.

<[log in to unmask]&a=&b" target="_blank">http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/SCRIPTS/WA-FERRET.EXE?S2=ferret-search&q=&s=(diet+101)&[log in to unmask]&a=&b>

I've only had one instance of a ferret getting anything natural caught
in its throat and that was Roman, my Path valley ferret who was still
new to the natural diet and attempted to inhale an entire chunk of
Cornish Game. He did this because another ferret had come near him and
he decided to vacuum the food rather than walk off with it. He'd been
chewing on it already and had it small enough to gulp, but not quite
small enough to pass easily through his esophagus. He could still
breathe, but he was definitely in discomfort until the piece managed to
slip into his stomach. If you've ever swallowed a piece of bread on the
wrong peristaltic wave, you'll likely feel the discomfort Roman felt.
But it certainly was not life threatening, and he immediately learned
to pick up his food instead of attempt to inhale it!

The comparison of human dental condition to ferrets: Humans have
different blood types and this variance in blood types also means
differences in genetic qualities of body fluids, bone density and
dental enamel. Ferrets, regardless of breeding, do NOT have different
blood types,

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0887796303000877

http://www.vin.com/VINDBPub/SearchPB/Proceedings/PR05000/PR00298.htm

so their body fluids will be similar from a Marshalls ferret to a Path
Valley ferret to a Hat Trick ferret. This means the action of tartar,
plaque and sugars will be similar on all ferret's teeth; as will the
action of eating whole prey and raw meaty bones.

For those kibble feeders taking affront that I insist ferrets on a
natural diet will exhibit optimal health consider this: can a ferret
survive on a kibble diet? Yes. Can a ferret thrive on a kibble diet?
That depends upon your definition of thrive.

Consider this comparison using fabric as an example.

Fabric can be processed from unnatural items to create a shirt that is
perfectly wearable. This to me equates to the cheap kibble diets often
fed to ferrets; and offers a very standard health appearance and
activity level of ferrets which is generally accepted as being O.K.

A shirt blended from polyester and cotton costs slightly more and is
just as wearable yet is considerably MORE comfortable than straight
polyester. This equates to the better quality kibbles available for
ferrets, and the subsequent improvement seen in their health and
activity levels.

But a shirt made from silk is 100% natural and while just as wearable
as the previous fabrics it is far and away the most comfortable. This
is the equivalent of the natural diet and offers significant
improvements of health and activity in the ferret!

For those who have started with ferrets and upgraded their kibble
quality, one of the first things often commented is how they've noticed
a big improvement in their ferrets. The next thing they do is share
this improvement with other ferret folks. Why would this be any
different for folks upgrading to a natural diet?

[Posted in FML 6237]