I have a nutritional question (maybe Sukie can help?). I have been
looking at the Wysong canned rabbit au jus on the wysong site and
noticed when you go to the Ferret Diet page and you click on the Rabbit
Au Jus label it says canine/feline diet - which I was wondering about
but then thought, ok, but it says 100% rabbit - so 100% rabbit is just
that - no grains or fillers so it shouldn't make a difference if the
label says canine/feline and not ferret. I wrote to them and they
confirmed my deductions, but I also noticed on the label it says 10%
CRUDE protein: http://www.wysong net/PDFs/labels/RABBIT.pdf
but if you look at the Wysong 'Dry Matter Analysis' (you'll need to
zoom in to read it!):
http://www.wysong net/PDFs/drymatteranalysis.pdf
and you look at the Rabbit Au Jus (9th one over) you'll see it says
65.6% protein so now I'm confused. What is the difference between
CRUDE protein and 'regular' protein?
 
Also does any one know how important Taurine is in the ferret diet? I
am getting conflicting info when I do a search for Taurine and ferrets.
And does anyone know what a natural source of Taurine would be for
them? One source said Taurine is in clams, shell fish, seafood and meat
but would there be enough Taurine in a pretty much all meat diet then
for my ferts? I have just recently gotten them switched over to a
pretty much all meat diet (cooked, but we're gearing toward raw next).
Right now we are getting chicken, giblets (livers, hearts, gizzards),
egg, a little pork (sometimes beef) and a small amount of kibble mixed
in for some added vitamins (VERY small amount of kibble and it also
becomes moist in the mixture so it's not hard kibble anymore when they
eat it). We are also going to attend a reptile show to purchase some
feeder mice/rats on the 20th of this month to add to their diet which I
am considering just grinding raw and adding to their meat diet mixture
I'm now feeding.

Thanx for any suggestions as I'm new to this meat diet thing, but it
DOES make perfect sense to me. I tried to get my previous ferrets to
eat meat - offered them both raw and cooked chicken, turkey, beef and
eggs and they would have none of it so I gave up until coming across
the FML which lead me to some raw diet sites that suggested mixing the
kibble w/the cooked meat to get them used to it, then slowly decreasing
the amount of kibble which worked BEAUTIFULLY!

Dawn, Hamlet, Socrates, Romeo, Simon and Alexander

[Posted in FML 5852]