Edward have you watched ferrets kill the live prey or are you just
going on a supposition? I have seen ferrets kill live prey and proceed
to eat them and the majority of the time they do not eat the stomach
or intestines. As a matter of fact the larger the prey, the larger the
stomach and longer the intestinal tract, the less likely it is the
ferret consumes those innards.

Communications with people that routinely offer their ferrets whole
rabbits reveals that very often the stomach and intestines remain
untouched. Ferrets will happily eat the liver, the heart, the lungs
even the kidneys but many of them will not touch the stomach or the
intestines.

Some ferrets of course do eat the entire animal but the majority of
them are selective about what they eat and usually what gets left
behind uneaten is the digestive tract. This could very well be mother
nature's way of reducing parasite loads in the predator.

Polecats in the wild eat prey according to seasonal abundance. A study
of polecats in the marshes of France showed frogs being a large part of
the diet as well as bank voles. Frogs guts don't contain plant matter
and bank voles often eat insects and invertebrates. Keeping this in
mind even were ferrets to eat the guts of their prey, the digesta
within the intestinal tract is not equal to 5% of the prey's bodyweight
and certainly is not 5% of the polecat's or ferret's total dietary
intake.

>Do we conclude therefore that the ferret cannot benefit from consuming
>herbivorous digest, especially when one pulls up the ancient adage
>that the portal to the small intestine at the duodenum is lacking a
>defined, ruminant fermentation sack, the vestigial cecum?"

It is not an "ancient adage" that the ferret is lacking a caecum, it
is an anatomical fact. You cannot surmise that because the prey animal
chewed the plants and that the plant matter is in various stages of
digestion that this automatically equates to the ferret being able to
assimilate such plant matter.

Regardless of which animal is digesting it, the plant matter still
requires specific enzymes to be broken down; the ferret lacks such
digestive enzymes. The speed with which digesta moves through the
ferrets digestive tract also precludes beneficial breakdown in a timely
fashion of such plant matter. In other words to digest plant matter it
takes specific enzymes and "x"- amount of time to process; things which
the ferret cannot offer in order to gain significant nutrients from
plant matter.

You claim the ferret can, to a limited extent, eat like an elephant or
a horse; and you claim, "Ferrets benefit mightily from vegetables,
fruits, and some other so-called prohibited food groups, but not in
the normal cellulose compounded glucose structures of natural plant
growth." Apparently as a result of your foundation's exclusive process
of : "Particle Micro-miniaturization and Hyper-thermal Extraction".
Which to me, sounds simply like grinding and cooking the plants.

You must've forgotten a communication years ago, in 2001, on the FHL
where you inquired about the ferrets digestive abilities:
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/YG2414
Dr. Tom Willard offered a rather informative answer illustrating the
reasons why plant matter does not benefit the ferret and should not
be considered a significant source of nutrients for the ferret.

Cheers,
Kim

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[Posted in FML 6070]