Q: "If you were forced by demons (CA F&G) to feed your ferrets ONLY one or
two kibbled foods, which would they be?"
A: Purina Fishin' Gestapo Kibbled Giblets and Iams Game Warden Kibble.
Actually, I wouldn't. I buy as many of the higher quality kibbles as I can
get and mix them together in a single container. Usually I cut the kibble
50% with Zupreme feline diet (formerly called Hill's Zupreme Carnivore Diet)
before serving, but not always. My opinion is that individual meal quality
is not as important as overall quality, providing the "poor" meals are
infrequent and the ferret is healthy. Its sort of a common sense approach;
a meal at MacDonalds is not that good, but it does no harm if it is
infrequent and the person is healthy.
If I had no choice, I would pick ferret or mink kibble over the cat kibbles;
they may stink more but I think they have less grains included in the food
because they are not technically kibbles but pelleted foods. They are still
byproducts and waste, and heavily cooked, but at least the meat percentage
is higher than in cat foods.
Q:"Why grind the kibble? Why can't you just crunch it up?
A: Because its required by the Grindmother of Ferrets...
The purpose is not to disguise the flavor but the smell. The smaller the
particles, the more surface area, the easier to inhale and the more smell.
The object is to fool the ferret's olfactory imprinting.
Q:"I heard some pet food is made from dead pets...."
A: You never heard of recycling?
There is *NO* law that forces pet food makers to tell you where the meat
protein comes from, what species they were rendered from, the condition of
the animals before rendering, nor the amount of cooking done to the food
before packing. The only requirement is the product cannot be labeled beef
if it is chicken. The law does say pet food makers can use 4-D animals
(Dead, Dying, Disabled, Diseased), food rejected for human consumption,
euthanized pets, road killed animals and even restaurant wastes, and they
are not required to tell the consumer when included in pet food.
Some cities attempt to recover some of their animal shelter costs by
selling their euthanized animals to rendering companies, who skin them.
cut off the meat, and toss the bones into a boiling vat to recover the
gelatin, calcium salts and grease. The meat is dehydrated (sometimes after
cooking), then ground to a powder to be sold as meat or protein meal, a
common ingredient in cow, chicken and pet foods. Not only are city pound
animals found in rendering plants, but also some animals that die in
veterinary care end up there becuase there many not be a local incinerator,
the dump is off limits, and/or the city may require the animals to be
rendered or cremated and it is cheaper to render.
Now, in all honesty, outside of the mental picture that a ferret might be
eating the lost cat from down the street, the protein meal is not bad
except for one small problem. Many times the animal was euthanized by
injection, many killing agents do not break down at cooking temperatures,
and the chemicals are carried to your pet in trace amounts. Add them to
the unknown chemicals carried in by sick or dying animals and you can have
an chemical brew of unknown composition, and the pet food makers have no
obligation to inform you at all. Worry about BHA or BHT? How about lead,
other heavy metals, antibiotics, growth stimulants, hormones, and
pesticides? Pesticides enter the "kibble ecology" when treated plants and
grains are fed to chickens and cows, the lead from cattle feeding on grass
contaminated by car exhaust (leaded gas may be history, but the past
fall-out is still there), and the antibiotics, hormones and growth
stimulants are routinely fed to both chickens and cows. Many of these
substances are *not* effected by cooking. BHA/BHT *might* be devils, but
they are devils I know, not the unknown demons hiding behind "meat
byproducts" and other collective ingredient terms.
Q: "Why do you fed your ferrets brands of kibble that have BHA or BHT?"
A: Because I love watching them at work with their tiny biochemistry sets.
I didn't say I did. I said I mix all the high quality foods into a single
container and mix it 50% with Zupreme feline diet. But lets talk about
those two preservatives. All food will, in time, rot. Why does kibble
not rot? Because it is only 1o% mositure, because it has so many grains
compared to meat and fat, and because it is cooked at high enough
temperatures to kill the bacteria then packaged in clean containers. Even
so, it will still rot given enough time, especially when the fats or meats
are not highly processed. Some add BHA/BHT to prevent the fats from
becoming rancid, but these chemicals have been shown to cause problems in
high dosages. Their toxicity in the trace amounts fed to animals in pet
foods has *not* been remotely demonstrated in scientific experiments.
Still, I am concerned. However, since I mix kibbles together and those
containing the preservatives are in the minority, and since my ferret's
normally eat maybe 70% non-kibbled food, I am not concerned enough to stop
feeding them the foods. What concerns me more is the way kibble is made so
you it won't rot without preservatives; they make it mostly grain and
dehydrate it to the level of bone, which harms the teeth and the rest of
the body. *MAYBE* my fert might get sick from preservatives, but for sure
they will grind their teeth down to stubs on hard nonpreserved kibble.
I'll take my chances with the first to eliminate the later.
Bob C and 20 MO Carnivorous Clowns
[Posted in FML issue 2344]
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