>From:    Lisa Mancilla <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Choking on 8 in 1
>This is just a note to you other ferret owners who are feeding your ferrets
>8 in 1.  Please be careful!!!!
 
We feed 8-in-1 periodically and have had no problems with it at all.  We had
a problem with the Iams adult and a few of our "pointer" jills, who would
get it stuck crosswise in the roof of their mouth and we were forever
rescuing them.  Perhaps your ferrets are eating too quickly?
 
>From:    Anonymous Poster <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: DIGGING FOR FOOD!
>My boy, "Little Dude" has got to dig all of his food up, ...
 
No, your ferret needs constant access to his food (every 3-4 hours) so you'd
just be limitting his food intake and it won't even stop the digging habit.
I've had VERY hungry ferrets come in and some of them also dig in the bowl,
no matter how hungry they were.
 
We have 8 rescues that came in altogether, and they were obviously fed
spradically because they fight viciously over their food.  Some of them
crawl right in the dish and cover it with their bodies while they eat so the
others can't have access.  Or they dig it out in a frenzy and rush to the
corner where they flung it and eat it there to avoid getting bitten by their
cagemates who want the food in the bowl.  As they settle in and get used to
the idea that the food is always there and there is always enough for
everyone, they get a little better
 
>Is there a special feeder to alleviate this problem?  Any ideas from >anyone?
 
Here's what's worked for us: Many of our cages are wire, which means all the
food they dig out falls on the floor and creates big messes, but also gives
the dog a voracious appetite for cat food.  So what we did was take a
shallow but decent sized tupperware container, and zap strap it to the sides
of the cage (we put it in a corner and attached it on two sides) so that
they can't move it around.  They we got a heavy ceramic bowl (not too big to
push around, but too heavy to flip without some real effort) and put that
*in* the tupperware dish and filled it with food.  Now when they dig, they
fling the food into the tupperware container and they can still eat it out
of there.  It hasn't occurred to them to fling it out of there yet, but I
think all they want to do is eat it off the floor, and the shallow container
is floor-like enough to satisfy them.
 
It worked so well we are looking into doing the same thing for our litterbox
diggers!
 
Sheena - [log in to unmask]                           |To Err is Ferret  |
Director - Wherret Ferrets Halfway House & Ferretry  |To Forgive...well |
VP - Ferret Association of Greater Vancouver         |...That's Our Job!|
         We're on the Web! http://ww2.portal.ca/~cmc~/ferrets/fagv/
[Posted in FML issue 1725]