Open letter to ferreters with sicko ferrets,
After reading todays postings and reflecting on all the sad news of
sick and dying ferrets, I shut down the computer and retreated to the
kitchen to prepare my lunch.
Today my frets and I will share our food, as we do most every day and
while it's still very warm and smelling so good. I eat what they eat
and we both like the taste and consistency.
Today I added an extra half pound of fresh/frozen meat to the crock
pot because it's cold here today, especially in the basement - in the
ferretarium - as we are prone to call our ferretville.
Just a dash of iodized salt, hot tap water, the cut up potatoes, the
tomatoes, the broccoli, the left-over breakfast pancake, wetted with
huckleberry juice, graded carrots, the side of salmon skin (my wife
doesn't like the fish skin too much, but I sure do) half an onion, a
sprig of garlic, some left-over baked beans, a sliver of apple, two
chicken eggs less the shells, and a glob of creamy peanut butter.
Tonite I'll add all the chicken fat that was trimmed of the chicken
thighs that we're having for supper, in addition to the first course,
the soup. And because I like the slippery, mucoidal feeling on my
tongue as I sip the soup, I add a cup of barley or rolled oats.
The ferrets too really love that slippery, mucous sensation on their
tongues from the cooked barley/oats and will lick the soup can
absolutely shiney brilliant to get every last bit of that smooooth,
tasty and cream-like cereal.
This protein/veggie/etc. mix will cook over a low flame for about two
hours, under pressure, until the hardest of the veggies are soft and
can be dolloped into my Osterizer mixer heavy glass bowl and churned
at highest speed (about 2400 rpm) for either 60 or for 120+ seconds.
The four cutting blades at the bottom of the Osterizer bowl, spinning
at high speed as they do, really minimize the chunks in the hot soup so
that everything is shredded into the tiniest of particles: consequently
no one piece or solid food chunk is detectable, but instead flows like
soup over the lips, into our mouths, over the tongues and down our
throats with a magnificent taste and a divine aroma.
We slurp it down with gusto and the ferrets do the same, their busy
tongues lapping the soup from around the side walls of the soup cans
until their bellies are bulging. The big hobs actually submerge their
"chins" into the soup as they lick down the warm soup. At times they
stop lapping and back off, rubbing their lower jaw on a nest cloth,
only to return to the soup and gobble down all that they can possibly
hold. ** What's really good is to sop up the hot soup with a chunk of
buttered pumpernickle bread with a thin smear of hot, hot horseradish
sauce. I don't share my sopping bread with the ferrets; it's too hot
for them.
From time to time when I'm cooking up the soup, I'll add whatever is
handy at the time from the kitchen counter of from the refrigerator.
Every now and then I'll add a segment of orange, a piece of banana,
some left-over avacado, spaghetti, porkchop grease, canned fruit,
fish/sardines, and my granddaughter's surplus breakfast milk and
Cheerios. What ever is close at hand.
I gotta say, that with our ferrets and with me we two are living
garbage disposals, in so far that we throw next to nothing away,
but eat it all, either in the form of solid food or in the form of
micro-miniaturized food particles in solution ... in effect, a soup
mix. ** And what tickles me the most is that the human quality meat we
and the ferrets get to eat is free from the supermarket ... at no cash
cost. I do have to pay for gasoline to drive to and from the market,
but the Mrs. has to go shopping once a week anyway for regular
groceries, so she picks up the frozen meat packages for us and the
ferrets. As for the other ingredients that go into the soup we eat, we
get also free from neighbors and friends who know about our ferret farm
and donate their surplus and dated food stuffs which we pick up once a
week.
As you may have realized if you've read this far that the food we make
for our ferrets is the same food we eat ourselves, but with a few
reservations about our food that wouldn't be the best for the ferret's
GI tact. Since the soup is never the same two or more days in a row,
the variability is outstanding and if the ferret's don't get something
they need today, then by golly they'll likely get it tomorrow for sure.
The ferrets really do good and so do I, at 50 lbs overweight and obese.
On the other extreme, when the ferrets get more than they can digest
and assimilate, they excrete the surplus. So our approach is a bit
different from the nutritional experts who fabricate ferret kibble or
other ferret foods to maximize the nutritive value of a theoretical
diet and is balanced, whatever that really means, our approach is to
let the ferret have whatever his body and taste demands and let his
body determine what is to be rejected at a particular meal.
This approach is not dressed up in scientific terminology, except to
classify this manner of feeding as complete and surplusistic ... and
that ain't exactly scientific, is it. But it works for me, says Mr.
Mustelid.
The soup is never identical day to day. It differs substantially, and
that's the saving grace one might say, because were it a constant,
unvarying mixture, any missing basic nutritive requirements would
not be met. Consequently, the same food, fed unchanged day after day,
can contribute to potentially disastrous health effects, high
susceptibility to disease, a substandard life style, minimal longevity
and death at the hands of vets, some of whom don't really know
efficacious treatment of substance starved animals, and particularly
ferrets, whose basic nutritional requirements are unknown to this day.
Some do say that too much surpasses too little any day.
Food transit time through the ferret gut is short relative to other
animals, especially man. What is the ratio? About 1/6th time in the
ferret as compared to man: 4 to 23 hours. So anything we can possibly
do to make those 4 hours more efficient, we should take a closer look.
By more efficient, I mean to achieve some small amount of predigestion
even before the soup gets into the ferret's mouth.
As you already know, the purpose of the gut is to render transitory
food to its smallest, particulate and basic organic chemical structure,
all the way down to the food particle size and unit that can get
through cell walls and into the cell's protoplasm at a reduction in
particle size of approximately 670 times.
Through the process of micro-miniaturization and cell wall thermolysis
degredation outside of the gut, we have provided the food processing of
a living mammal a huge advantage by artificially extending that short
gut time to a value in excess of 4 hours. It follows logically that the
nutritive benefit coexistent with micro-miniaturization is expected to
be increased, because the catalytic enzymic processes will occur in
greater number and frequency due to the vastly increased surface area
of the food particles.
The majority of ferrets husbanded, birthed, and adopted from here have
dined with me, our food being nearly identical since 1981. By nearly
identical I mean that I have eaten the same soup as my ferrets, my
kits, my skunk, my mink and my four pet crows.
I have nothing to show for this dedication in so far that no ferret
here has ever suffered ECE, has ever displayed rat-tail baldness, has
ever suffered adrenal cancer, has ever displayed obvious deadly
symptoms, and in the case of donated ferrets with cataracts, the
cataracts have decomposed to minute and gritty half-moon structures
confined within the lower cusp of the lens and thereby restored that
eye to near normal vision.
Use of the soup has transitioned bitey, scratchy ferrets into kissy
lickers and has enabled uneducated potential adopters of ferret kits to
handle them with impunity and have no fear of the needle sharp toothed
kits.
May you, dear reader, be more knowledgeable now and may you in the
quiet of your own mind consider what has been written here this day. I
think there's something here for you to seriously consider, for your
ferrets, if not yourself.
Edward Lipinski
Ferrets North West Foundation
[Posted in FML 6288]
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