Melissa: Ho Ho.  Actually, we are WAY to polite to say anything about cow
tipping.  But you did give me a great idea for my Christmas cards.
 
Regina:  He He. I vote for the brook. Get a new friend named "Donny."
 
Margaret: Nice post. Thanks.
 
Elizabeth: Die!!!!  You just wait until I get Home!!!!
 
And now for a response (not a flame, PA-LEESE)
 
>>Second, it is presumpuous to assume that just because an animal can
>>live on a single food, that it would want too.
 
>While that may be true, if I fed my dog something different every time I
>bought food, or even "mixed" occasionally something else with his food he
>would have COLITIS VERY VERY BAD!!!!!!!!
 
Can't address the dog issue, but with up to 20 ferts over several years, it
has never caused a problem.  Ever.  Also, the intestinal structure of dogs
is different from that of ferrets, and I wouldn't necessarily expect them to
react similarily.  As I tell my Fish and Gestapo friends, dogs are not
ferrets and ferrets are not cats.  Don't expect what occurs in dogs to
translate exactly to ferrets; chocolate is a good example.  Foster is more
than 10 years old, and I give him a chocolate chip every day and he has been
locally honored for scats larger than from my cat, Bastet.  Besides, I
didn't mean to imply they got something different each time I bought food, I
thought I said I mixed several chows together so they would have a variety
in a single serving.
 
A good friend of mine has a dog with terrible colitis, and she mixes four or
five different chows together so he can have a variety without the sudden
change that causes the flair-ups.  Works for her (and him).
 
>>MOST of my treats are of a carnivorous nature; i.e., boiled-until-soft
>>chicken bones
>Yikes, yikes and double YIKES!!!!  I didn't think that you were supposto
>give ANYTHING chicken bones, as they are terribly prone to splintering.
>Even boiled, I would think that they could potentially cause problems...
 
I've addressed this before.  I'm not home where my FML data base is, but I
counted up the number of reported chokings posted on the FML and got a
couple from turkey bones and about 20 from kibble, including a very serious
kibble choking event.  Besides, there are two kinds of choking events, those
we all have at one time or another, and those that kill.  I am unaware of
_ANY_ instance where a ferret has died from eating a bone.  Normal choking
events demonstrate the animals ability to fix a mistake.  Swallow it wrong,
cough it back up and try again!  I place this in the "don't have sex before
a boxing match" category; lots of belief, very little evidence, no danger.
 
Yep, bird bones do have trabeculae as you discribed, but mostly in the ends,
similar to mammal bones, and having identified hundreds of thousands of bird
and mammal bone fragments, some might consider that experience as
demonstrating a minor knowledge in the matter.  I stated I used
boiled-until-soft chicken bones, _because_ they are so safe.  First, 99% of
all poultry bought in the US are immature birds, and the ends of the bone is
already soft and not yet fully formed.  Boil them for about an hour, and
although the middles might be somewhat firm, the ends will crush flat under
the pressure of your fingertips.  Not a problem.
 
I have studied the nutritional components of bone very carefully (Those who
want a copy of my thesis "The Effects of Fragmentation and Boiling on
Osteological Materials and Their Archaeological Significance" or a soon to
be published paper "Pemmican As An Evolutionary Adaptation of the Plains"
can contact me privately) Immature chicken bone is completely filled with
red bone marrow.  Red marrow is where red blood cells are made, and the
tissue is full of iron, fat soluble vitamins, and of course, minerals.  This
is a very good food, is better than almost any other snack, and is a primary
food source for many species, and a secondary food source for all Carnivora.
Bone is good for carnivores, including ferrets.
 
ALL carnivores all over the planet, including feral dogs, feral cats, and
(in New Zealand) feral ferrets, eat bone every time they make a kill.  (BTW,
so did/do humans, and it is unlikely we would be were we are today if we
didn't).  If carnivores choked each time they crunched up a bone and
swallowed it, we would be butt deep in rabbits and deer and gawd knows what
else, and the Carnivora would be Saturday morning cartoons like dinosaurs
(Bingo instead of Barney?).  Domestication may have altered our ferret's
temperment and behavior (and a few other things) but nothing physically
significant like wolves being selectively bred into little minature dogs
with teeth sticking out of their faces, or a cats with noses setting under
their frontal lobes.  In short, ferrets *can* eat bone.
 
Ferret's teeth are DESIGNED to slice meat and bone into chunks small enough
to swallow.  Unlike rubber (or carrots), which passes through the digestive
juices essentially unaltered, leaving rough and sharp edges that can catch
in the curves of the bowel, bone DISSOLVES in stomach acid, and even large
splinters are smoothed and rounded in the stomach.  The trabecular spurs
mentioned etches away, and the larger rounded pieces pass right through with
"no tribble at all." I have an ankle bone of a deer (a calcaneus) that went
through a coyote's digestive tract, and it lost 70% of its mineral mass.
Stomach acids laugh at trabeculae.
 
I've been flamed for this before, but no one has offered any evidence that
giving bone to ferrets is unhealthy, dangerous, or even a minor problem.
And even if you could tell of one or two instances, so what?  Do we remove
bread from our diet because people die from choking on it each year?  Hell,
babies have died from choking on their mother's milk, and I don't hear cries
of "ban the breast!" (Yipes!  Yipes!  Triple YIPES!) Risk is part and parcel
of life, and bone eating is a very low risk.  Yes, the *occasional* ferret
might have an *occasional* problem, but for everyone else,including the
chokin' dummy, bone is a very nutritious -and safe- snack.
 
Some people ask how to get their fert to try the bone.  I break off the end,
scoop out a little marrow, and rub it on their lip.  They lick it off and
become converts fairly soon.  Just remember, ferrets aren't dogs, and bone
isn't rubber.
 
Bob C on the road sans ferts.
 
[Moderator's note: I can't wait to hear Bob's explanation of how feral
carnivores manage to boil their prey before consumption.  BIG]
[Posted in FML issue 1935]