>If I'm following Bob's recipe for Chicken Gravy, how much turkey
>should I use?  I'll probably make a small batch to see if Mr. Fussy
>will eat it. I don't know if he likes turkey as much as chicken.
 
Bob's recipe actually doesn't even mention how much *chicken* to use,
but a roasting chicken is usually about 6 pounds.  Your substitutes
should come close.
 
Keep in mind that turkey seems to have less fat than chicken, and
supermarket ground turkey is aiming squarely for the "healthy eater"
market - it's going to have only miniscule amounts of fat in it.  Your
ferrets *need* that fat, so you will need to find another source of
animal fat for them.  (Count that fat in the 6 lbs, too.) Even when I
made "turkey gravy" by substituting a whole turkey for the whole chicken,
the batch came out less fatty.  Ground turkey won't even come close.  My
supermarket doesn't have a fat section, so I can't tell you where to get
it.  Perhaps you can ask the butcher for some of their trimmings.
 
Also keep in mind that you can't feed ferrets on meat alone and expect
them to be healthy.  Meat-only diets are horrible for *any* animal.  They
also need the nutrients that can be found in the bone marrow and the
organs.  You won't really be able to replace the marrow (anybody got any
ideas there?), but you can buy some packaged chicken livers or chicken
giblets (or even turkey giblets) if you can find them.  Or beef liver.
Whatever you can find, toss it in there, but make sure it doesn't have
any additives.  (Count *these* in the 6 lbs, too.)
 
Finally, you *can* do a little bit for the missing bone.  Take a trip to
your local health food/vitamin store or counter and pick up some pure
bone meal powder.  Solgar makes a good one that contains only bone meal
and bone marrow meal powder with a little added B12.  Toss a little of
that in your mix.  (Bones make up part of that 6 lbs, so yep, you guessed
it - count this too.  The only complication is that the dry powder will
weigh MUCH less than live, hydrated bone, so what you really want to do
is *subtract* some from that 6 lbs as "bone weight".)
 
You might also consider using a pressure-cooker.  I made my first batch
of pressure-cooker gravy this weekend, and I have to say I like it.
After 45 mins in the cooker with a 30 min cooldown, the chicken was just
melting off the bone and the fat was rendered out nicely.  I wanted to
eat it right there and give the ferrets something else!  (BTW, I barely
covered the chicken with water - that turned out to be too much, but I
don't know how much it affected the results.) I was able to blend up the
chicken and small bones easily after that.  I gave the larger bones
another hour in the cooker with some of the leftover water, and they came
out easily finger crushable.  BTW, I didn't even cut up the chicken for
this - just rinsed it off and threw it in there whole.  Easy!
 
Williams-Sonoma has a very nice electric pressure cooker for about $150
called the Nutritionist by Russell Hobbs.  This is a nice big, heavy,
quick heating cooker that seems to be much safer than many of the
stovetop models - some of which cost even more!  It even has browning,
steaming, and low and high-pressure settings.  And it holds a whole 6 lb
chicken perfectly.  :-)
 
Lots of good gravy advice can be found here:
http://www.trifl.org/gravy.shtml.
 
BTW, Rocky might not like the turkey at first, but work with him a little
bit.  He will more than likely get used to it.  Ours did when I tried it.
 
roger & the wolverine wannabees
missing bear
[Posted in FML issue 4212]