I was a little surprised that the ferret mentioned in a post about
Blue Wilderness cat food had a problem. However, it may have been the
only food used I suppose and the ferret just ate too much or had an
individual problem.

I have used the BW "duck" and "chicken" flavored cat food both for
feeding ferrets and hand feeding baby birds for about a year. Blue
Wilderness was recommended to me by another ferret rescuer here in CA.
I figured I'd try in on baby birds and I soak the kibbles and hand feed
them (for tiny baby birds I make a mushy formula with bird vitamins).
I'm a wild bird rehabilitator and mostly do insectivores which we try
to raise on meat flavored cat foods. The blue wilderness kibbles soak
up a little more quickly than the Science diet it seems to me, but I
haven't actually timed them. The dark small ones (see later comment) do
take a little longer - but they do soak up until soft it seems to me.

I admit for the birds in the aviaries I soak the kibble of all dry
foods for an hour or more or until they are soft. I haven't noticed
any problems.

I also feed other brands - Totally Ferret Turkey Venison/Lamb, Grain
free Zupreem, Totally Ferret Active show/pet as well as the Blue
Buffalo.

Maybe feeding one brand of food is a bad idea. Also, I have noticed the
small dark kibbles are relatively few. I counted out 88 regular kibbles
to 8 of the small dark ones (I'm just a compulsive ex lab technician
and biologist which is why I get sidetracked by these interesting
things!). That's about ten per cent by number, and about 5% by actual
mass since the small ones are about half the size of the regular
kibbles.

Perhaps the ferret did have a bad reaction because of some individual
sensitivity or GI problem, but if there were a problem with BB brands
I'm sure some cats (or other ferrets) would have an issue as well. It
will be interesting to hear if anyone else on the FML has noticed a
reaction to this particular brand of cat food.

Meryl

[Posted in FML 7779]