Many ferret references will tell you *not* to fed your ferret bones because
they will choke on them.  I have personally challenged FMLers to report any
ferret death from eating a bone.  I got a single answer, describing a single
incident.  The ferret reportedly bled to death from cuts to the inside of
the esophagus, stomach and intestines caused by the passage of a sliver of
bone.  Do the following experiment.  Break a piece of chicken or turkey bone
so you have as sharp an edge as possible.  File it sharper if you wish.  Buy
intestines from the local butcher; chicken will do fine.  Cut a section of
the intestines open and lay it flat.  Now, using the bone, try to cut the
intestine.  If the intestine is against a hard surface, the bone is sharp,
and you push real hard, you *can* cut it.  However, in the living body,
intestines are not against hard surfaces and bone splinters are not being
dug into their surfaces with human upper-body strength.  Further, irritated
intestines produce lots of slimy thick mucous.  Even if the bone were sharp,
it would glide down on a coat of slick mucoid slime.  Yeech.
 
The incident is all the more improbable because stomach acids *disolve*
bone, rounding off all exposed and sharp edges, (as do intestinal enzymes to
some extent).  Could it happen?  Well, maybe if the ferret was very ill
from something else, such as a bacterial overgrowth or ECE.  Was the person
wrong?  I think they honestly reported what they were told by their vet.  I
think the vet was wrong, saw internal bleeding (probably from a toxin or
bacteria), and simply blamed it on the small fragment of bone.  Ferrets are
domesticated varities of polecat, with millions of years of evolutionary
design geared towards the eating of bone.  Bone is a natural and important
part of a carnivore's diet, and *anyone* who tells you different is not very
well educated in the matter.
 
Pick up a copy of any number of professional journals geared toward the
diets of animals in zoos, and you will find a strong tendency towards
providing zoo animals with as natural a diet as possible.  I have several
articles that actively promote the inclusion of bone in carnivore diets.
Aanimals eating fresh meat and bone tend to breed better, are happier and
are healthier than animals eating more artifical diets.  Can a ferret choke
on a bone fragment?  Sure can, but there are far more reports of ferrets
choking on bits of kibble.  Besides, choking is a far cry from dying; I have
choked hundreds of times in my life, most recently in Seattle while sipping
a bottle of "Fat Weasel Ale," yet I live.  Don't be sad.
 
Doesn't kibble contain bone meal?  Some do.  Most don't.  Most supply the
calcium requirement by adding cheaper calcium carbonate to the kibble mix.
But bone is made of hydrated calcium phosphates, so you have to add
phosphoric acid as well.  The problem is, if calcium is out of proportion to
phosphorus, the body will actually suck bone from the skeleton to balance
them out.  To get away from this problem, some kibbles use bone meal, but
you have to be careful of quality.
 
What is the difference between bone, bomemeal and calcium carbonate?  When
you feed a ferret calcium carbonate plus phosphoric acid, both chemicals
will form ionic (charged) molecules that are absorbed into the blood.
Calcium carbonate breaks into both negative carbonate ions and positive
calcium ions in body liquids, especially in stomach acid.  In the presence
of carbonate ions, the phosphoric acid will give up hydrogen, leaving
phosphate ions behind.  The hydrogen reacts with carbonate, forming water
and carbon dioxide.  That leaves two ions, the calcium and the phosphate.
These are very important to the body for many reasons besides having a hard
head.  Without calcium and phosphate ions, muscles wouldn't work, nerves
wouldn't fire, and your body couldn't regulate the acidity of your blood,
not to mention build bone.  If the calcium carbonate to phosphoric acid
ratio is not perfectly balanced, the excess chemical can make the blood
either acidic or alkaline.  To counteract this problem, the body will
disolve its own bone to buffer the blood and neutralize the imbalance.
 
Eating bonemeal or bone is similar, except you skip the first part of the
process--the chemical reaction where you eliminate the carbonate and
hydrogen ions--and you don't have to worry about imbalances because bone is
already perfectly balanced.  Bone is chiefly composed of a substance called
"hydroxyapitite," which is a hydrated form of calcium phosphate (hydrated
means water is incorporated into the molecule, which, like plaster, makes
the final crystaline structure stronger and more rigid.  Hydroxyapitite is
frequently called bone or calcium salts).  The difference between bone and
calcium carbonate plus phosphoric acid is that bone has far more nutrients
than the two chemicals, which include lipids, vitamins, proteins, and iron.
These nutrients are so complete that primary carnivores can survive on
nothing but a diet of fresh bone.  Eat nothing but calcium carbonate plus
phosphoric acid, and your ferret will die.
 
What whats the difference between bone and bonemeal?  If the bonemeal is for
human or animal consumption, it has been steam heated.  It is about 65-75%
calcium salts with a maximum of 2% ammonia.  If used as fertilizer, then
the calcium salts can drop down to 40-55%, and it contains 4-5% ammonia and
20-25% phosphoric acid.  So don't feed your ferrets fertilizer-grade
bonemeal, even if it is cheap.  The steaming process, like cooking, can
break proteins and lipids apart, destroying their nutritive value.  Also,
bonemeal has had some of the natural oils and fats removed during
processing, which lowers the fat-soluble vitamin content.  Although a ferret
could live on a diet of bone, it would not be able to do so eating nothing
but commerical bonemeal.
 
By the way.  Most bonemeal for human consumption comes from South American
cows because the bone has lower levels of lead than the bones of cows in the
USA.  Lead, like most heavy metals, is incorporated into bone and remains
there for the life of the animal.  USA cows ingest a high amount of lead
from the environment.  Leaded gas is the chief culprit; the lead is still
in the soil that grows the grass and grains that feed the cattle.  In South
America, with fewer roads and lots fewer cars, the soil lead levels are
much lower, and the bonemeal is safe for human use.  Most bonemeal for
animal feed comes from the good ol' USA.  Surprised?
 
Bob C and 20 MO Ferting Fools.
[Posted in FML issue 2315]