When I went through this with a very malnourished and abused ferret, I
found that in general, depending on how big the ferret is, shoot for at
least 90 grams of food a day, but I made sure ferrets that were eating
a little bit on their own get at least 60 a day from me. However, that
includes supplements.

If he is truly not eating anything on his own, divide up the 100 grams
of food (or whatever number you decided on, ask your vet) into the most
feedings you can manage. If you are home all the time, every 2 to 3
hours is good. This also helps by keeping the tummy full more often.
The problem with only 3 feedings a day is that you have to feed larger
quantities, which can be more stessful on a fuzzy but you have to do
what you have to do!

When you feed Sprout, warm up the baby food and put it on your finger,
and let him lick it (or his duck soup). If he doesn't like it, take
some in a syringe and give him 1ml of it, and let him run around. He'll
wipe his mouth most likely. But baby food is quickly accustomed to, and
after half an hour, try again. See if he gets used to eating it. Play
around with consistency - half baby food, half water, at first if he
doesn't like it. Always add some water to the warmed up baby food -
sick ferrets can eat it much easier. If he won't eat the food still,
play around with the temperature - most like it pretty warm and I have
seen some that won't touch it unless it's borderline hot.

If he really, really will not swallow ANYTHING (gritting teeth, letting
food inserted in mouth drip out) and continues this - then you have to
get a feeding tube. I have only had to do this once with a ferret. The
vet can give you a catheter to use for it, and they can show you how
far to insert the catheter (usually three or four inches, but it
depends on the size of your fuzzy). The catheter is made of a material
that will naturally go down without lubrication. All you would do is
fill up the large syringe with baby food or soup (nothing with grit)
and attach the feeding tube. Scruff the fuzzy and insert the tube. Have
a 1ml syringe next to you in case he tries to chew at the tube (you can
put the syringe in to prevent that). Most ferrets get very used to the
tube and it takes 15 seconds to 30 seconds to fill up the ferret's
tummy this way. Make sure you go over everything with your vet, as you
need to get the tube far enough down that you are doing it right. The
other benefit of tube feeding is that it makes ferrets want to eat for
you much much faster ;)

As far as water, I only "force" (getting a ferret to drink from a
dropper) liquids if they're dehydrated already, and even then I try to
limit this to whatever they want to comfortably drink. If a ferret is
constantly dehydrated, of course SQ fluids is the way to go - it sounds
like you're not having to worry about this. My rule of thumb - SQ as
much as can be comfortably injected under the scruff, wait for this to
go down, and if needed again, repeat.

Laryssa

[Posted in FML 6632]