MC wrote: >Leigh, I think it is true for MOST ferrets, not few. Yes, if one is >willing to spend a month or so, mixing foods, doing the blends, you can >get most ferrets to switch foods. However, it isn't as easy, in most >cases, at your post would let readers to believe. I don't personally see anything wrong wih mixing foods for a month. What's so difficult about that? I guess we have different ideas of what is too much trouble. And yes, I think that over a month or even two there are probably very FEW ferrets who coudn't be convinced to switch. >We are dealing with people that wouldn't think to blend and grind or >deceive a ferret into eating a new food. Actually, as I was posting to this list, I guess I was giving people more credit than that. >They are given a ferret or buy an older ferret from a pet store or get a >ferret from the pound and then watch as the fuzzy wastes away from >starvation because no one knows what food it likes. If the people are >lucky enough to find the FML or one of the many lists on ferrets and ask, >they will be helped, but very very few ever find out what killed their >ferrets. You are completely right in this, this can be a problem, if you don't know what the ferret ate before how can you gradually change it over to another food. That's not really the point I was addressing in the last post. I guess my point in the last post was that I have known a LOT of people who are feeding their ferrets low quality, grocery store cat food. They tell me they have tried to switch the ferret to a higher quality food and that it 'just wouldn't eat' so they switched it back. I have tried to convince these people to try to do it gradually. And yes you will get a big mess at first, yes the ferrets will snorkle through the dish to pick out the Purina from the Totally Ferret, yes they might even lose a little weight, but it can be done (I would still be willing to say IN MOST CASES) in a manner of one week to several months. I do beleive all the trouble is completely worth it. Whatever the higher quality foods may lack they are still so much better than the grocery store brands, that even a few months of scattered food is worth it for the health of your animals. Leigh [Posted in FML issue 3112]