About 1/3 to 1/2 of my recent emails have been concerning the Chicken Gravy
formula; mostly supportive comments by people using it, but also quite a
few questions.  Most I will defer until I have more time, but I will answer
a few now.
 
Q: "Do you always give it as a paste or gravy?"
 
A: No.  I sometime pack it into sausage casings and make a "Chicken
Sausage" that I can later cut chunks from.  This will crumble a little
better, and is drier, so ferrets on limited fluids can enjoy.  Also, it
takes up less space, is easier to store, and is easy to turn into a gravy
or soup later.  And it looks cool in the 'fridge.
 
Q:"Is it better raw?" "Do you cook it later?"
 
A: It's always better for carnivores to eat foods as raw as possible.
However, the small amount of cooking called for in the recipe will not
destroy nearly as many nutrients as done by heating the paste that is made
into kibble.  Plus, the vitamins are replaced later, so nutritive losses
are minimal.  As for cooking, I sometimes give the ferrets a treat by
crumbling some of the Chicken Sausage into a skillet, and lightly browning
it in olive oil, but that's about it.
 
Q:"Do you ever mix it with other foods?"
 
A: Yes.  I sometimes soft boil a few eggs and mix it 50:50 to the Chicken
Gravy.  Yolks are better raw, and whites are better cooked, so don't use
raw eggs (raw egg whites can cause anemia).  Sometimes I'll toss in some
finely chopped fruit or raisins.  Other times I gross myself out and drop
in some earthworms.  Yeeech!  When I make Turkey Gravy, I always add a few
cranberries because they are so festive.
 
Q:"Do you need to fortify it with bone meal [or other substances]?"
 
A: Not if you make it like in the recipe.  The included bone, the intact
carcass, the fat and nutrical and honey do all that.  You have to remember,
a ferret can only absorb so much at a given time and excess nutrients are
left in the corner.  You have more than enough iron from the meat and red
bone marrow (there is a lot more iron in muscle as myoglobin than in the
blood as hemoglobin); adding brewer's yeast is overkill.  The same is true
for calcium salts; the bone does more than enough.  Also, the nutrients are
roughly proportionate to each other, and adding one thing might make the
use of another difficult, or even draw nutrients from the ferret's body to
balance the excess.  You don't really need to add anything to this mixture.
An exception might be an electrolytic fluid (pedialyte) to cut the gravy to
a liquid to use as a duck soup with ferrets having an electrolytic
imbalance, but thats an exception.
 
Q:"The honey and nutrical worry me.  Is it too much sugar?"
 
A: I don't think so, especially when compared to the sugars metabolized
from the starches in an equivelent amount of kibble.  This recipe will make
a gallon of stuff, depending on how wet you make it.  Four tablespoons of
honey is small, and even adding in the nutrical carbohydrates, the amount
is a tiny percentage of the total food volume.  If you are worried about
sugars, be worried about the approximately 50% starch carbohydrates
included in each mouthful of kibble.  THATS a lot of sugar, even if it is
metabolized more slowly than the glucose in honey.
 
Look at it this way.  Assume a ferret can metabolize 100% of the food it
swallows.  It can't, but for this argument, lets assume it to be true.
Also, lets assume the tube of nutrical, honey, kibble and oatmeal brought
the total up to 2 cups of pure sugar (it would be far, far less).  The
ratio of non-carbohydrates to carbohydrates would be about 8 pints (1
gallon) to 1 pint (2 cups), or 8:1.  The actual ratio would be much less
than 8:1, but less assume this worst-case example for the argument.
Kibbles are approximately 50% to 70% carbohydrates, required to form the
hard, shaped biscuit.  Assuming the lowest range, 50%, that would make the
non-carbohydrate to carbohydrate ratio 50% to 50%, or 1:1.  Now, assuming
only 25% of the kibble carbohydrates turn to sugar, and 100% of the Chicken
Gravy sugars are utilized, the ratio would still be 4:1 for the kibble and
8:1 for the Chicken Gravy.  Remembering that carbohydrates are nothing more
than long strings of sugar, which food has more sugar?  At the very worst,
Chicken Gravy has half the sugar of kibble.  In reality, and not this
kibble-biased argument, Chicken Gravy would have much less than a tenth
of the sugar of kibble, and since I suggest removing the kibble once the
ferret accepts the new food, the amount of sugar would even be less.  Now,
see why I say the honey in Chicken Gravy is inconsequental?
 
One person argued the sudden jolt of honey-based sugar would be worse than
the slow release of kibble-based sugar, but I ask how 4 tablespoons of
sugar in a gallon of gravy constitutes a "jolt?" They aren't eating 4
tablespoons of honey in each serving.  The honey is *VERY* diluted, and in
reality is less than the 5% glucose given in IV fluids.  That is glucose
sugar directly injected into veins.  Is that a jolt, and if so, why do vets
use 5% Dextrose solutions?  (Some do use Ringer's or plain saline with
insulinomic ferrets) But, if you aren't swayed by the simple-sugar facts
and are still worried, you can cut the amount of honey in half or so, but
I suggest not changing the amount of nutrical, which is included for fatty
acids and vitamins.  You don't want to change that, and nutrical and
ferretone/linatone are the cheapest, fastest and most complete way to add
them without buying a scale and doing lots of nasty math.
 
Bob C and 19 Mo' Ferrets Fantasic nipping the Brown Poop Cowboy
[Posted in FML issue 2655]