>Lumping raw meat in with mice is *exactly* my point, why is one better than
>the other?  I haven't seen anything to make the distinction between the two
>and that is what I am curious about.  After all, they don't feed live prey
>to big cats in zoos, they feed meat.  Why should the ferrets (domesticated)
>be so much more picky than the big cats (wild)?
 
Chunks of raw meat by themselves are not a balanced diet.  Most notabley,
the calcium and phosphorus ratios are way off from what they need to be,
which is bad nutritionally.  (There is way too much phosphorus in
proportion to the calcium.  As a result, (and this may not look obvious
to someone watching the big cats eat in a zoo) the meat you see being fed
has had supplements (like bone meal), and other vitamins and minerals
added.  It's not just chunks of meat and nothing else.  In addition, in
the wild, a predator would eat the guts -and partially digested
stomach/intestine contents-of their herbivore prey.
 
I agree that the ferret shouldn't be any pickier (nutritionally) than the
big cats.
 
>And forgive me if this is too dense on my part, seriously, but fur?  Why do
>I give my ferrets furball medicine all the time but to clean out the fur?
 
That *does* seem backward, doesn't it?  I don't know what the prevelance of
hairballs in feral ferrets, polecats, or wild cats is like.  I read a post
from someone (Sheila, was it you?) some time ago (not sure if it was here
though) that said feeding whole carcass rabbit, the chunks of skin with fur
actually are thought to push stuff through the GI tract, and that as a
result she doesn't need to use hairball remedy at all.  (I can't find the
post, so that's from memory.)  Maybe it makes a difference that they are on
skin and not just loose hairs that form clumps in the stomach, I'm not sure
how that would work.
 
-Ilena Ayala
(Who used to work at the Bronx Zoo, and now works in an office-a different
type of zoo entirely. :-)   )
[Posted in FML issue 2548]